Academic Integrity: Academic Dishonesty

Academic dishonesty refers to committing or contributing to dishonest acts by those engaged in teaching, learning, research, and related academic activities, and it applies not just to students, but to everyone in the academic environment (Cizek, 2003; Whitley, Jr. & Keith-Spiegel, 2002). 

Intentional academic dishonesty (or plagiarism) is knowingly presenting someone else's ideas, research, or words as your own.

Unintentional academic dishonesty (or plagiarism) is not giving proper credit for someone else's ideas, research, or words, even if it was not intentional to present them as your own.

You are always responsible for correctly citing all ideas, phrases, and passages taken from other authors wherever they occur in your work.

Both intentional and unintentional academic dishonesty are subject to disciplinary consequences.  

There are many different types of Academic Dishonesty:

• Cheating is the most common form of academic dishonesty, and includes the unauthorized use or attempted use of material, information, notes, study aids, devices or communication during an academic exercise. 
  • Copying from another student's test or homework.
  • Using a cell phone to find the answer to a test question without the professor's permission.
  • Using materials such as textbooks, notes, or formula lists during a test without the professor's permission.
  • Collaborating on an in-class or take-home test without the professor's permission.
  • Storing notes in a graphing calculator.
• Plagiarism is the act of presenting another person's ideas, research or writings as your own. 
  • Having someone else write or plan a paper for you.
  • Find and replace - replacing words to try to bypass plagiarism detectors.
  • Mashup – copy and pasting material from multiple sources.
  • Using past work that is your own (you need professor discretion to do so).
• Internet plagiarism includes submitting downloaded papers or parts of papers, paraphrasing or copying information from the internet without citing the source, and "cutting and pasting" from various sources without proper attribution.
  • Paying online services or someone else to complete an assignment for you.
• Obtaining unfair advantage is any activity that intentionally or unintentionally gives a student an unfair advantage in the student’s academic work over another student.
  • Having a friend that is a great writer edit or rewrite a paper.
  • Obtaining graded quizzes and tests from a friend that previously took the course.
• Falsification of records or official documents includes forging signatures and falsifying information on official records and/or assignments. 
  • Making falsified changes to a research project or experiment to better support your argument or hypothesis.
  • Forging an advisor's signature on an add/drop form. 

Facilitating Academic Dishonesty is helping or attempting to help another student commit an act of dishonesty. These acts may not directly benefit the accused but assist another student in violations of academic integrity. A few examples include:

• Allowing another student to copy from your homework.
• Giving a Blackboard test password to another student without the professor's permission.
• Knowingly allowing a friend to sit near you during a test so they can look at your answers.