second time this year. paper got flagged, prof scheduled a meeting, and im trying to figure out what evidence i should actually bring. last time i just panicked and said ‘i wrote it i swear’ which obviously did nothing. this time i want to walk in with stuff that actually counts. what do appeals committees actually look at?
sitting on these panels regularly. The strongest evidence we see, in rough order: Google Docs or Word version history showing incremental writing across multiple sessions. Browser history showing research activity on related sources. Annotated drafts, marked-up readings, scratch notes. Time-stamped emails to a TA asking about the topic. The weakest evidence is ‘I have my notes’ presented as a single end-state file. The differentiator is sequence and friction over time.
Strong agree on Thomas’s list. Add: if you used any AI tool at all, even for spelling, disclose it proactively. Panels react badly to anything that looks like it was hidden. Disclosure that doesn’t change the academic conclusion is treated very differently than discovered omission.
Also worth checking if your school requires the panel to consider sources beyond the detector score. Many policies do but TAs don’t always know that. Quote the policy at them if you have to.