Cheating and Plagiarism: Academic Dishonesty

Cheating and plagiarism have always been a problem in the society. Especially academics dishonestly have risen in favor of fashion. Universities continue develop honor code to stop cheating from happening, also cheaters come up with new technical to cheat. Nowadays, cell phones have supported students to cheat and websites serve unethical solutions to assignments.

What is academic integrity? “Academic integrity means honesty and responsibility in scholarship. Students and faculty alike must obey rules of honest scholarship, which means that all academic work should result from an individual’s own efforts. Intellectual contributions from others must be consistently and responsibly acknowledged. Academic work completed in any other way is fraudulent” ( ).

Academic dishonesty occurs usually in many forms: cheating, recycling, fabrication, unauthorized collaboration and plagiarism. These may be accomplished by submitting someone’s work acting as own work, or using unauthorized sources that not allow in exams or assignments. It is important that students should become familiar with what is academic dishonesty and how to avoid it.

Cheating is one of the high level academic dishonesty forms. These actions are considered cheating: using unauthorized sources on tests, copying from other students’ assignments or allowing your work to be copy, stealing assignments, test, or projects before tests, or using electronic device when taking tests. Fabrication is just making things up. According to Penn university academic integrity, fabrication is manufacturing sources, information, quotes, or anything else has no place in articles or papers based on analysis, reporting, or a research.

Submitting own work which has been graded and submitting again for another courses called recycling. But some instructors may allow using as long as students did themselves, students must not assume that it’s acceptable process. If student want to reuse a same assignment discuss with professor. If professor give permission to use it than revise assignment and check sources and citation, or not using it at all. Unauthorized collaboration is working with partner without permission of instructor and submitted for a grade. In computer science class, students are allowed to discuss projects concepts, but code has to be their own. If students work together and submitted same code separately than it will consider as plagiarism. They have to create their own code if a concept is same that’s fine.

Example of cheating, Mia was a student at University of Minnesota. In 2013, she moved Twin cities from another county. It is hard for her to fit in Twin cities because of understand the language, and make new friends. Sometimes it is difficult to do assignments and concentrate on all her classes. Fall 2013, she is taking a biology class. She thought it would be doable class but it turn out pretty tough. Mia studied as hard as she could for the class work and testes. In one of the tests, the answers are to be marked in scantram by blacking out lettered circles on a scantram. The test covered the topics that she didn’t study. She tried her best to finish the test and then hands in. she come back to her desk and await the end of class. Other students are still working on the test. Mark was one of them, he seems to have no problem with the test and he is taking his time to do finish the test. Mia is still waiting for the class to end but between than she saw mark scantram and there are many answers different than her. So she trust on mark answers and ask professor for her scantram back, saying that she did not correctly put her student ID number. Professor hand it back scantram, she quickly erases and changes some answers that she saw on Mark’s scantram and turn it back in. Sometime later, the instructor informs her that the proctor saw her change her answers beside student ID number. She is going to be given an “F” for the test and for the course ( ).

Mia has trouble with English isn’t excuse for copying answers from another student. If she having difficulty to catch up with class than she should talk with instructor, or approach another students, or get help from Teacher Assistant. This is clear case of cheating because Mia copied answers from Mark. Mia could ask for extra time to study for the test, or asked about what kind of questions were going to be on the test so she could focus on studies. If we looking from Mia point of view than she is from another country that she probably don’t know the rules or help are available for her. Stress is not considered justifying circumstance, but failure might be.

Example of plagiarism, John is undergraduate subject coordinator on intro to programming. The projects require students to submit code with design, implement, and test and debug programs using C++ language (programming language). John knows that students can get code from internet, friends or buy from websites rather than create own code. So he creates an assignment to reduce the opportunities to copy from internet and not doing their work. It is important to that projects will help to build the basic knowledge of programming. Amy was one of John’s colleagues; she asks if she can test her shared code on john’s student assignments john agrees. John thinks his students did their assignments their own, but Amy’s program find 15% of the students copied code from classmates.

Sometime, programming assignments have certain common ways to solve the problem. So that didn’t mean that they copied from each other or get from internet because at the beginning level class they don’t have enough knowledge about the ways that they can approach the same solution. But it didn’t mean that students didn’t copied form internet or other students. It’s all depend how accurate Amy program is, if program just looking same character that found in the students assignment than their might chance that students copied, but if programming testing on the algorithms than it’s all depend on the requirements of the assignment. Because if professor assign that student have to includes technique than sure it will be large number will display.

There are some situation it’s hard to decide that students done Academic Integrity violations. For example, Kali and Lucy are international students form Narnia and in the same science class. Lucy understands English better than Kali. Lucy works hard to improve Kali’s English vocabulary. Kali tries her best to improve her English, but she is having a hard time accommodating the information because she isn’t sleeping well or eating. During exam, Kali is having trouble understanding what questions are asking for therefore she doesn’t know what to write for the answer. She scared that she’ll fail the class. Kali starts asking Lucy what to do. The TA notices that Kali and Lucy are talking in Narnian and he asks them what they are talking about. So Lucy explain than Kali doesn’t understands what question asking for so she just translating the questions for Kali. The TA asks them not to talk and if Kali has question then she should bring it to him. Kali want to him and TA explain to her but she still didn’t understand what the questions asking for. So she went back to her seat and starts to panic. Few minutes later, they both start talking in Narnian. TA tells them to stop talking, but TA knows Lucy is a smart student but thinks that Lucy might just translate the question but he isn’t sure. So he decides to report to the professor.

Lucy risked her grade by not doing as the TA said. Both could get failing grades on the exam. It would have been better if Lucy had talked to the professor about Kali’s problems about understanding English. The professor might suggest to take ESL classes to improve Kali’s English and make new friends or might able to accommodate Kali’s needs better if he had know there was a problem. The professor might give one change to both to re-take exam, if possible with a Narnian translator for Kali to test her knowledge. Because it is a very tough situation that there is change that Lucy might just translate questions to Kali and not gave any answers. So that would be unfair for her to define as academic dishonesty.

References

http://www.library.illinois.edu/learn/research/academicintegrity.html

cheating example

http://tutorials.istudy.psu.edu/academicintegrity/academicintegrity_print.html