A contract depends upon trust and transparency. If either of these are missing, the contract is effectively broken.
As such, any breach of academic integrity means that, at the very least, you have broken your contract. (And it is possible that, as in any other course, you may face even more severe consequences; see these cautionary tales.)
Therefore you should make yourself familiar with the university’s policies and advice: Academic Integrity at UBC. See particularly the university’s definitions of types of academic misconduct.
Specifically, let me emphasize that “UBC expects that students can be taken at their word and therefore providing any information, orally or in writing, that is false is a form of academic misconduct.”
Hence, for instance, your blog posts should constitute your own responses to your reading. You should not seek to present information that you may find elsewhere (on some other website, for instance) as if it were your own. (You may if you wish consult secondary sources, but you should make it clear that you are doing so, by indicating your sources and citing them.) You should not use ChatGPT or similar software to write your blog post for you.
Remember that your blog posts are not graded for quality. Some weeks you may have more to say, or feel you have more insight than others. That is fine, so long as you write the minimum required, even if you are writing about your lack of insight! Sometimes you may be confused or unclear about a reading. That is also fine: say so in your blog post! Explain, so far as you can, what you find difficult. Be as specific as possible. That is helpful–and you may well find you are not alone–and can inform classroom discussion. But the fact that your blog posts are ungraded does not make them any less important.
What does not help is when you try to pass off someone else’s knowledge or insight as if it were your own.
And remember that if you are having any difficulties at all in the course, for whatever reason (e.g. competing priorities, feeling overwhelmed or lost, etc.), please do feel free to talk to me about them.
