Academic Integrity

Academic Integrity is a term that you and your child need to become familiar with and although the college’s Academic Integrity Policy or Code of Conduct document will probably the be driest, least exciting piece of literature your child ever reads, he needs to read and understand it. Remaining ignorant of these policies will certainly cause problems, and serious ones at that. Academic dishonesty can result in no credit for the project, paper, or test in question, a failing grade in the class, or even academic probation or expulsion.

Academic integrity covers many areas but can probably be summed up in a single sentence. Don’t cheat, and if you aren’t sure if what you’re planning to do is actually cheating, ask. The first thing that people usually think of when they think of cheating involves cheating on tests by either looking at another student’s answers or bringing unauthorized materials or “cheat sheets” into a test. But there are actually oh so many more ways that students can cheat, so here are a few of the big ones to avoid at all costs.

Plagiarism - The internet has successfully blurred the lines of what is or isn’t plagiarism. With so much information and media available at the click of a mouse or the tap of a link, students have a sense that everything online is free game. After all, it was free and easy to obtain, so it must belong to everyone, right? Wrong.

Online sources of data or opinion are subject to the same requirements of printed or database works and are just as easy to cite.  The important thing for students to remember is that unless they are writing a personal opinion paper, any information about which they write needs to be cited or placed in quotation marks in the case of a direct quotation. When in doubt cite it, or leave it out if the citation cannot be found. Fortunately, students can use plagiarism checking software such as Plagtraker, Viper, Ithenticate, and others that are available online.

Self-plagiarism - This is most often seen when a student turns in a paper or project already submitted for another class, either in the same semester or from a previous one. Students need to keep in mind that faculty do actually talk to one another and if the same paper is submitted for two classes in consecutive semesters it is very possible that an instructor or teaching assistant will recognize the work. Also, professors use plagiarism software to scan papers and if the paper has been scanned twice it will be detected. Professors expect new original work for each assignment and it isn’t hard for students to either cite the previous work or find the citations they used in a previous assignment.

Buying papers from a term paper service - These services can easily be found online and papers can be purchased for anywhere from twenty to thousands of dollars. Some of these services operate under the guise of being editors, but in reality, students usually send the paper’s requirements to the service and are charged by the word or by the page. The papers are indeed original works, but are not the student’s original work, and it is quite possible that the same paper or pieces of the paper have been reproduced many times with few changes. These papers are easily discovered through plagiarism software such as Turnitin, Plagtracker or iThenticate used by most colleges.

Collaboration - This is another area of academic integrity that students have a hard time wrapping their heads around because they are used to being required to collaborate in just about every class they take. Collaboration on papers, projects, take home exams and other homework is perfectly acceptable, IF the professor has stated so in the syllabus or the class lecture. When in doubt, ask, and remember that although professors assume that students will not create works entirely on their own, they expect original work with appropriate citations.

Falsifying or fabricating data or sources - While this type of cheating is more often seen in graduate school or senior level research projects, other undergraduates need to be made aware of this type of cheating as well. Anytime a student deliberately falsifies data they are committing this offense.