NTU Students Penalised for Alleged AI Use in Assignments
Three students at Nanyang Technological University received zero marks for an assignment after being penalised for allegedly using generative AI tools, citing non-existent references. The students disputed the findings, claiming they submitted evidence of their writing process and that citation errors were misattributed to AI use.
What happened
Three students enrolled in a Nanyang Technological University module on health, disease outbreaks and politics were investigated in April 2025 and penalised with zero marks for an assignment after being found to have used generative AI tools in their work.
The university said the students were penalised for academic misconduct as the assignments contained non-existent academic references and statistics or broken web links. Two students admitted to using Gen AI tools; the third claimed to be unaware that the platform they used, which markets itself as an AI-powered essay-writing service, fell under that category.
The course instructor had explicitly prohibited the use of AI tools for written assignments throughout the semester and reminded students multiple times that using Gen AI would result in a zero grade, which accounted for 45 per cent of the overall module grade.
Reported impact
The three students disputed the university's findings, claiming they were accused of academic fraud over citation-related issues despite submitting evidence of their writing process or intent, and raised concerns about the disciplinary processes.
One student's Reddit post on June 19 went viral, in which she claimed she was accused of using AI for a final essay because she had made errors in her citations and used a reference organiser.
Index analysis
The dispute highlights unclear institutional guidance on distinguishing between legitimate citation tools, reference organisers and prohibited AI systems, and the difficulty of identifying AI-generated content versus human error in citation and references.
Governance controls
NTU said students were given the opportunity to present their cases during a formal review process and were formally communicated the zero-mark sanction in early May.
Classification
Sources and evidence
Sources not yet published
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