Running head: DIGITAL ERA (Change the running head based on your topic)
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Student Sample Draft
Pre-drafting
Academic honesty questionnaire:
Identify three reasons why students cheat? (point-form)
1. Students are stressed out and overworked with personal and civic commitments that does not
give them enough to time take finish their assignments.
2. Some students have to take 8 courses, so they don’t have time to spend more time on certain
courses that they are weak in. English is hard for some students, so they need to get extra help.
It is hard for students who take 8 courses to get this help.
3. Some students are lazy. They don’t come to class and then realize assignment is due so they
use AI tools like ChatGPT to do the work for them.
Identify three problems associated with ChatGPT and/ other AI tools. (point form)
1. The information isn’t always right. Anything after 2021 isn’t reliable.
2. It’s cheating, You are getting artificial intelligence to do your work for you. You are going
against the policies of the College and can get caught and get a 0 or fail the course.
3. You aren’t learning anything.
Option 1: Go on google and browse through a few sites to find 5 AI tools used for essay writing
that may breach academic honesty in Colleges. (100 words)
Please see Option 2 as the student picked option 2
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OR
Option 2: Go to https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt. Search “ List 5 AI tools that are used for essay
writing that may breach academic honesty in Colleges. Paraphrase the response in your own
words. Please note that chatgpt uses your data when you sign up which may become a breach
of your privacy. If this is a concern, you might want to choose option 1. (100 words) =
Essay generators: These are programs that use algorithms to create an essay based on a topic or
prompt. While they may save time, they often produce generic and poorly written content that
may not meet the requirements of the assignment.
Essay rewriters: These tools use algorithms to rewrite existing content to make it appear original.
However, they often produce awkward or nonsensical sentences and can result in unintentional
plagiarism.
Essay writing services: These are websites or companies that offer to write custom essays for a
fee. While they may promise original and high-quality work, there is no way to guarantee that
the content is not plagiarized or that the writer has not violated academic integrity.
AI language models: Language models like GPT-3 can generate coherent and sophisticated text
based on prompts or input, but they can also be used to create content that is not original and that
may violate academic honesty.
Option 1: Go on google and browse through a few sites to find ways to avoid academic
dishonesty. (100 words)
Please see option 2 because the student picked option 2
OR
Optional: Go to https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt. Search “How to avoid academic dishonesty”.
Paraphrase the response in your own words. Please note that chatgpt uses your data when you
sign up which may become a breach of your privacy. If this is a concern, you might want to
choose option 1. (100 words)
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Academic dishonesty can have serious consequences and negatively impact a student's academic
and professional future. To avoid academic dishonesty, here are five ways:
Understand what constitutes academic dishonesty and the consequences of violating academic
integrity.
Plan your time well and start assignments early to avoid the temptation to plagiarize or cheat.
Always cite sources correctly and appropriately, using the citation style specified by the
instructor.
Work collaboratively with peers only when allowed and always give credit to others for their
contributions.
Ask for help when needed and seek clarification from the instructor about assignment
requirements or expectations.
Digital Era (Change the running head based on your topic)
Title
Student Name:
Course: College Communications 2 (COMM171)
Instructor Name:
Date:
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Digital Era (Change the running head based on your topic)
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Title:
Introduction
Look at a map or visit Google Earth. It becomes clear that every point on the surface of
our world has been revealed to us. Yet our era remains one of discovery, perhaps more so than
any other. Only this time the frontier is not a geographical place. Instead, it is cyber. It is
networked. Social media and persistent data connections cause us to re-evaluate how we
communicate and relate with each other. Those of us who can pause from the stream of data
pouring in from our screens can’t help but wonder what bad things must invariably accompany
the good of an Internet-connected world. Psychotherapist and mindfulness teacher, Nancy Colier,
gives voice to these disquiets in her 2016 Best Self article “The Power of Off - Your Best Self In
a Virtual World.” In this article, Colier makes an argument for a counter-push against the
influence of technology in our lives. While her position is overstated and her credibility as an
authoritative voice on this topic is questionable, her argument is compelling from a commonsense standpoint and aligns with my personal experience.
Summary
In this article, Colier addresses the issue of whether we should limit our use of
technology. Colier argues that technology is addictive and negatively transforming the way we
relate to life. She believes that people need to be more critical of their technology use. She
supports her argument with statistics suggesting that technology is highly addictive—a problem
we don’t properly recognize, in Colier’s view. She claims that because of social media, we now
relate to life as a performance, as something to merely capture and record instead of experience
authentically. Finally, she claims that despite all the connectivity, our lives feel less satisfying,
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more meaningless than before. She believes we must reassert our own control over technology
by looking at it critically and making different choices.
Response 1: Author’s reasoning
Nancy Colier clearly supports her thesis; however, upon further analysis, her argument’s
claims seem to be overstated. Colier is right to take a critical look at our dependence on
mobile/social technologies and digital media. The cultural shift towards social media is huge,
and its effects need to be examined. That said, there are problems in the way Colier goes about it.
While her argument partly rests on accurate data, she has interpreted that data in questionable
ways and has included a number of overgeneralizations and unsupported reasons in her
argument. At the core of Colier's argument is the idea that we are addicted to social technology.
Explaining her response to the question of whether we are conditioning young people to become
internet addicts, she says that "they already are addicts, as are we, the adults who are raising
them" (para. 2). She compares it to alcoholism and drug addiction (para. 4), and goes on to claim
that like all addictions, "our use of technology is changing the way we relate to life" (para. 4).
She cites statistics to support the claim of addiction: "Forty-six percent of smartphone users say
their phone is something they couldn't live without. Ninety percent of 18-29 year-olds now sleep
with their phone" (para. 3). The numbers Colier cites appear to be accurate, or at least accurately
reported. Colier's likely data source on the 18-29 year-old demographic is cited by others (e.g.
Blodget, 2012). The problem is that it's extreme, and maybe scaremongering, to call this
"addiction" in the clinical sense. Integration of technology in our lives, and increasing reliance
on it, are not the same as addiction. Common sense suggests that the picture Colier paints is
unlikely and vastly oversimplifies both the effects of social media and human nature itself. This
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kind of sweeping generalization is dangerous because it can sound so convincing until you look
closely and realize that there is no concrete evidence to support it.
Response 2: Credibility
Beyond these limitations of Colier’s argument, I also question whether she is a credible
voice on the topic of technology addiction. On her own website, Colier is described in the
following way:
Nancy Colier is a psychotherapist, interfaith minister, and the author of “The Emotionally
Exhausted Woman: Why You’re Feeling Depleted and How to Get What You Need” (New
Harbinger, 2022), as well as numerous other books. She is a thought leader and national
speaker on women’s empowerment, wellbeing, and mindful technology, and has been
featured on Good Morning America, The New York Times, and countless other media. She
is also a regular blogger for Psychology Today. (Colier, 2023, About)
Based on this information, it’s clear that Colier, as a psychotherapist and minister, is experienced
in dealing with people and possibly addiction. It’s also clear that she is an experienced writer.
However, it does not seem that Colier has any specific academic or medical training related to
technology addiction itself. Given this, as a reader, we can find Colier’s argument thoughtprovoking and persuasive, but further investigation of credible, academic sources would be
required before accepting Colier’s position as accurate and authoritative. 
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However, despite these questions about Colier’s argument, I do agree with her commentary
about the role technology plays in our lives. For example, Colier (2016)  characterizes the
increase in mobile technologies as "engaging in a globally condoned addiction" (para. 4). This is
something I’ve observed in my daily life in the communities I engage with. I see that we are all
caught up with our use of technology, and, if anything, our dependency on technology has only
increased since the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, during the pandemic, I observed a shift in
acceptance about the role technology plays in our lives. With more challenging issues to
navigate, technology use and its over-use, received less of our concern. We were all struggling to
get through day-to-day routines, and if technology helped us with this, we embraced it further. I
noticed that technology was often applauded for its ability to connect and offer continuity of
otherwise prohibited activities such as large gatherings, ceremonies, and celebrations. Given this,
it does seem somewhat fair for Colier (2016)  to sum up life today as people "allowing
[themselves] to be dazzled into a state of entertained unconsciousness" (para. 13). Often, it seems
that technology offers us an escape from our lives; we enjoy being “dazzled” and “entertained”
by it. 
Conclusion
In conclusion, Colier's argument takes a clear position on the challenges of our
technology-drenched world. Her argument is persuasive, but its support can be questioned in a
number of ways. Perhaps this is the real problem with Colier's argument: She may be right in
many respects but failed to build her argument convincingly. In addition, Colier’s experience and
expertise does not make her an authoritative voice on the topic of technology addition. Despite
these limitations, the argument presented by Colier aligns with my life experience and, for this
Digital Era (Change the running head based on your topic)
reason, I agree with the argument. However, Colier's argument may leave skeptics unconvinced
and merely confirm the bias of people, like me, who happen to agree with her.
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