essay on academic honesty

Academic Honesty Essay

Introduction, academic honesty, dishonest conduct, preventing academic dishonesty.

Lately, academic honesty has become a major issue among the elite in the academic environments. It can no longer be simply defined as the carrying of illegal materials into the exam rooms or copying someone else’s work. Indeed, with growth in technology like smart phones and emergence of the use of internet in research work has caused administrators in universities and colleges to extend the definition of academic honesty or dishonesty.

Academic honesty involves the students submitting work that is originally theirs and inclusion of the cited sources in their work. The academic community is generally aware that it is not possible for students to come up with their own original work and therefore, allow inclusion of other people’s work in form of direct quotes of paraphrases only if the original author is appropriately acknowledged. Academic honesty takes different forms and addresses in various aspects in schools and colleges.

Academic honesty is considered important because the results obtained from schools or colleges are referred to in future. Future employers refer to these documents when assessing the abilities and gifts of the students before actual employment.

Therefore, high levels of integrity should be adhered to in order to ensure quality reports and accurate assessment of the student’s abilities and potential (Vegh, 2009). Students commit academic dishonesty when they engage in activities that are classified in four general types; namely, cheating, dishonest conduct, plagiarism and collusion.

Cheating is the most ancient form of academic dishonesty known in history. It takes different forms whereby the rules and regulations governing formal or informal examinations are violated. For instance, copying other people’s work during examination, sharing one’s answers with another during examinations, or submission of other people’s work, as one’s own original work.

During examinations, invigilators are placed strategically in the exam room to monitor the behavior of students but some students attempt to share answers (Vegh, 2009). A student is not allowed to communicate to their fellow students in an exam room without the express permission of the invigilator and a violation of these rule amounts to cheating. Taking an examination on behalf of another student also amounts to cheating. Generally, cheating offers unfair advantage to the students involved over the rest.

Unfair advantage could also be meted on students when they commit dishonest conducts like stealing examination or answer keys from the instructor. Desperate times call for desperate measures and students are capable of doing anything to rescue their dreams of scooping first class honors.

Such cases have been reported severally and they can be classified as dishonest conduct (“What is Academic Dishonesty”, 1996, p.77). Further, students who try to change official academic results without following the procedures laid by the respective academic institutions commit dishonest conducts. Obtaining answers before the actual exam or altering records after certification leads to low academic standards.

Plagiarism is the recent form of violating academic honesty and defined as intellectual theft. The crime comes in when one makes use of another person’s findings, as if his/hers, without giving the due credit to the source. Plagiarism takes the form of stealing other people’s ideas or words and the form of use of other people’s work without crediting the source properly.

The sources mentioned here include articles from electronic journals, newspaper articles, published books, and even websites (Bouchard, 2010). The internet has become a source of information for research and the easy accessibility and convenience of the same provides a temptation to the students to copy and paste other people’s work.

However, it amounts to plagiarism and is classified as a violation of academic honesty. Though plagiarism can be either intentional or unintentional on the part of the student, it still amounts to academic dishonesty either way. Students should therefore be careful to ensure that their work is free of any form of plagiarism.

Academic institutions have come up with measures to curb the spread of academic dishonesty to maintain the credibility of their programs. Academic dishonesty leads to production of half-baked graduates who lower the standards of education hence that of the university (Staats, Hupp, & Hagley, 2008, p.360).

Students who commit academic dishonesty do not think on their own hence they do not develop the art of thinking which is critical for quality education. Ensuring enough spacing between students in the exam rooms and adhering to silence during exams reduces the rate of cheating in institutions. Instructors should also participate fully in ensuring that the work presented by students meets the set standards in respective academic institutions.

Instructors should be able to call the students and ask them questions regarding their submitted work to ensure that they wrote the work themselves. Technological developments also assist in fighting these vices in institutions. Software development in the computer science field has developed software able to detect plagiarism. This software, known as anti-plagiarism software, runs scans through the internet by comparing the submitted articles with various databases in the internet.

The sentences are compared and any of them found matching in a particular percentage is classified as plagiarism. Academic institutions use this software to ensure that students do not copy directly and they appropriately acknowledge their sources (Celik, 2009, p.275). In some institutions, violation of anti-plagiarism or academic honesty rules in general amount to punishment of different forms that in worst-case result to expulsion from these academic institutions.

The forms of academic dishonesty and methods of prevention discussed above are only general descriptions. However, they can be discussed further into way that is more specific and forms that would help improve the standards of education in academic institutions through policy research by the concerned institutions. Academic honesty is crucial to the growth of a country’s economy because integrity defines the character of future graduates.

Bouchard, K. (2010). Discipline in Schools: Technology tests academic honesty. McClatchy – Tribune Business News . Web.

Celik, C. (2009). Perceptions of University Students on Academic Honesty as Related to Gender, University Type, and Major in Turkey. Journal of American Academy of Business , 14(2), 271-278.

Staats, S., Hupp, J., & Hagley, A. (2008). Honesty and Heroes: A Positive Psychology View of Heroism and Academic Honesty. The Journal of Psychology , 42(4), 357-72.

Vegh, G. S. (2009). Academic honesty for a new generation. McClatchy – Tribune Business News. Web.

“What is Academic Dishonesty” (1996). In Teaching Resources Guide 1996-1997 (pp. 77-78). Irvine, CA: Instructional Resources Center, University of California.

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IvyPanda. (2022, August 1). Academic Honesty Essay. https://ivypanda.com/essays/academic-honesty/

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IvyPanda . 2022. "Academic Honesty Essay." August 1, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/academic-honesty/.

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IvyPanda . "Academic Honesty Essay." August 1, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/academic-honesty/.

• Academic Dishonesty Classification
• Academic Honesty and Plagiarism
• Cheating Plagiarism Issues
• Academic Integrity: Cheating and Plagiarism
• Cheating and Plagiarism in Academic Settings
• Plagiarism: For and Against
• Plagiarism: The Act of Copying Someone Else’s Words or Ideas
• Spotlight on Plagiarism Phenomenon
• The Importance of Academic Honesty
• Plagiarism Effects and Strategies
• Maintaining Academic Honesty
• African-American Students and Mathematics Achievement Gap: Stereotype or Reality?
• Academic Integrity and Academic Dishonesty
• Concept of Academic Portfolio
• School Uniform: Correlation Between Wearing Uniforms and Academic Performance

Academic Honesty: Definition and Importance

Importance of academic honesty, viewpoints of students and faculty, causes of academic dishonesty, strategies to ensure academic honesty.

Bibliography

Educational institutions are the places where students are taught to build their values, moral integrity, and strength of character. As such it is very important that academic honesty is inculcated in them through rules, regulations, and guidelines. Academic honesty has become the focus of discussion among educators in recent times due to increased possibilities of cheating, making use of new technology such as the Internet and wireless.

Academic honesty is ensuring a moral code of behavior in the educational context. Academic dishonesty is a widely prevalent problem. According to a study by McCabe and Trevino (1993), based on 6,096 undergraduate students from 31 colleges in the United States, almost 75% of the students admitted to engaging in some form of academically dishonest activity during their college days; about 50% confessed to cheating in examinations or indulging in plagiarism, and slightly more than 50% admitted to cheating on homework assignments. Such prevalence of dishonesty within the academic circle can only be seen as a sign of declining ethical standards or a sign of a faulty educational system.

Thesis: Academic dishonesty is widely prevalent today and it can be tackled only through integrated efforts of students, faculty, the administrative board, and the society at large.

Pavela’s (1978) definition of academic dishonesty has been widely accepted. According to Pavela, academic dishonesty consists of cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, and facilitating academic dishonesty. Cheating refers to the acts of using crib notes, copying during the test, and indulging in unauthorized collaboration on homework assignments. Fabrications refer to inventing false information such as making up sources for the bibliography or reporting fictitious results for a lab experiment.

Plagiarism refers to using paper written by another student and passing it off as one’s own, buying a paper from some source, or using the work of other people within one’s paper without properly referencing it. Facilitating academic dishonesty involves knowingly helping a fellow student through some form of academic dishonesty. More activities might be added to the list proposed by Pavela (Whitley Jr. and Spiegel, 2002). Academic dishonesty can include misrepresentation by telling lies to an instructor, failure to contribute to a group project, and hindering others from completing their work.

It is important to have an academically honest environment because all students who come to college or school deserve to have an unpolluted learning environment where they will be independently judged on their performance. Educational institutions have the obligation to model and uphold integrity for future generations. Good scholarship and learning can happen only when they are based on a clear sense of academic honesty and responsibility.

When high standards of honesty are not maintained within the campus, faculty members are defrauded, students are subjected to unfair treatment, and society becomes deprived of its moral strength. Babson College brochure says that “academic dishonesty violates the most fundamental values of an intellectual community and depreciates the achievements of the entire college community”. Rutgers University points out the importance of academic honesty by saying that “Academic freedom is a fundamental right in any institution of higher learning. Honesty and integrity are necessary preconditions of this freedom”.

Students are often unaware of what constitutes academic honesty. They generally believe that it is acceptable to use: old test papers as long as they are not stolen, shortcuts such as reading an abbreviated version of the assigned work, and help from others. They also believe that some minor forms of plagiarism and conning teachers are acceptable. It is a significant finding that many students believe that facilitating academic dishonesty is justified when the intent is to help a friend.

McCabe (1992) found that 26% percent of the students, who confessed to helping a friend cheat, had never cheated themselves. Faculty members sometimes excuse some seemingly dishonest activities if they are done accidentally, or due to ignorance of proper behavior or uncertainty over what is allowed or when it approximates proper behavior (Whitley Jr. and Spiegel, 2002).

Students thus tend to take a more tolerant view of academic dishonesty than faculty members. However, both the students and the faculty feel that intentional dishonesty is a more severe ethical violation than opportunistic dishonesty (Whitley Jr. and Spiegel, 2002). Intentional dishonesty is when a student conspires with another student to copy during a test. Opportunistic dishonesty is when the chance to copy comes up when a student leaves his paper or notebook exposed (Whitley Jr. and Spiegel, 2002). However, there are always differences in the way people perceive what is cheating and what is not.

College students cite several reasons as to why they indulge in academic dishonesty. Cochran, Wood, Sellers, Wilkerson, and Chamlin (1998) have found that low self-control is one of the major causes of academic dishonesty, based on a study at the University of Oklahoma. Students have also confessed that alienation is another triggering factor. Due to alienation, college students often appeal to higher loyalties to groups such as campus secret cults, fraternities, etc. (Lambert et al, 2003). Sometimes students cheat for the simple reason to get good grades (Coston and Jenks, 1998). It has been the reason cited by students most frequently (Kibler et al, 1988).

Studies show that factors that cause students to engage in academic dishonesty are of three groups: personal traits of the students who cheat, the situation and the reasons students give for cheating (Kibler, 1993). Specifically, among several reasons which students give for academic dishonesty, concern about grades has been mentioned most frequently (Aluede et al, 2006). That is, pressure to get good grades makes most students engage in acts of academic dishonesty

Researchers have found that the following factors encourage academic dishonesty: competition, pressure to get good grades, excessively demanding environment, inefficient faculty, the leniency of the faculty, peer pressure, and a diminishing sense of morality and values among students (Aluede et al, 2006).

To protect the students from indulging in dishonest activities, colleges should enforce changes at the institutional level. They must provide environments that nurture the moral development of the students. Whenever students do indulge in such behavior, they must be forced to face the moral implications of their behavior and made to understand that “effective learning depends largely on honesty, respect, rigor and fairness” (Kibler, 1994).

Colleges generally communicate about academic dishonesty through student handbooks, brochures, or orientation exercises. It would be more effective if higher education managers undertake an ethos of promoting academic integrity and thereby create a campus environment that promotes academic honesty (Kibler, 1994). Erica B. Stern and Larry Havlicek (1986:140) have suggested that smaller classes and closer monitoring of students discourage students from indulging in acts of academic dishonesty. However, neither students nor faculty involved in their study believed that an honor code or trust system would reduce cheating on examinations.

Pino and Smith (2003) suggest that one way of rebuilding academic integrity and reducing the incidences of academic dishonesty is to foster the development of an academic ethic among college students. The academic ethic refers to “learned behavior” that involves giving studies the highest priority over leisure activities, studying regularly and in an intense fashion (Rau and Durand 2000:23). Pino and Smith (2003) hold that procrastination from watching too much television can increase the likelihood of academic dishonesty in order to make up for a lost time. However, those with an academic ethic are much less likely to procrastinate and would therefore be less vulnerable to the temptation of engaging in academic dishonesty.

Academic honesty is the sum value of individual and collective honesty within the educational institution and has to be taught, role-modeled, and rewarded. Students generally desire to be honest. By creating an environment that does not facilitate cheating it is possible to ensure academic honesty at all levels. Students, administrators, and parents must be supportive of efforts to eliminate, discover, and sanction academic dishonesty. Ultimately, only by creating an academic ethic, academic dishonesty may be prevented.

Aluede, Oyaziwo; Omoregie, O. Eunice and Osa-Edoh, I. Gloria (2006). Academic Dishonesty as a Contemporary Problem in Higher Education: How Academic Advisers Can Help. Reading Improvement. Volume: 43. Issue: 2.

Cochran, J. K., Chamlin, M.B., Wood, P.B., & Sellers, C.S. (1999). Shame, embarrassment and formal sanction threats: Extending the deterrence/rational choice model to academic dishonesty. Sociological Inquiry. Volume 69. 91-105.

Coston, C. T. M., & Jenks, D. A. (1998). Exploring Academic Dishonesty among Undergraduate Criminal Justice Majors: A Research Note. American Journal of Criminal Justice. Volume 22. 235-248.

Kibler, W.C. (1993). Academic dishonesty: A student developmental dilemma. NAPSA Journal. Volume 30. 252-267.

Kibler, W.C. (1994). Addressing academic dishonesty: What are institutions of higher education doing and not doing? NAPSA Journal. Volume 31. 92-101.

Kibler, W.C., Nuss, E.M., Paterson, B.G., & Pavela, G. (1988). Academic integrity and student development: Legal issues, policy perspectives. College Administrators Publications. Asheville, NC.

Lambert, E.G., Hogan, N.C., & Barton, S.M. (2003). Collegiate academic dishonesty revisited: What have they done, how often have they done it, who does it, and why did they do it. Electronic Journal of Sociology.

McCabe, D. L., & Trevino, L. K. (1997). Individual and Contextual Influences on Academic Dishonesty: A Multicampus Investigation. Research in Higher Education. Volume 38. 379-396.

McCabe, D.L. & Pavela, G. (1997). The principal pursuit of academic integrity. AAHE Bulletin. Volume 50. Issue 4. 11-12.

McCabe, D.L. (1992). The influence of situational ethics on cheating among college students. Sociological Inquiry. Volume 62. Issue 3. 356-374.

Pavela, G. (1978). Judicial review of academic decision- making after Horowitz. School Law Journal. Volume 55. Issue 8. 55-75.

Pino, W. Nathan and Smith, L. William (2003). College Students and Academic Dishonesty. College Student Journal. Volume: 37. Issue: 4. 490+.

Rau, W., & Durand, A. (2000). The Academic Ethic and College Grades: Does Hard Work Help Students to “Make the Grade”? Sociology of Education. Volume 73. 19-38.

Stern, E. B., & Havlicek, L. (1986). Academic Misconduct: Results of Faculty and Undergraduate Student Surveys. Journal of Allied Health. Volume 15. 129-142.

Whitley Jr., E. Bernard and Spiegel, K. Patricia (2002). Academic Dishonesty: An Educator’s Guide. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Mahwah, NJ.

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Academic Honesty: Why It Matters in Psychology

In psychology, academic honesty is about so much more than getting in trouble..

Posted April 17, 2021 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

• All colleges and universities have academic honesty policies with serious consequences.
• Websites that pay to write student papers violate academic honesty and are becoming more abundant and aggressive.
• Academic honesty is inherently psychological, involving questions of curiosity, trust, morality, and future orientation.

The other day, while looking for a free plagiarism checker to use in addition to the one provided by my institution, I came across a website blatantly selling papers to students. This particular site promises, for a high fee per page, to write students completely unique papers that won’t get caught as plagiarism. They’ll even write your Ph.D. dissertation for you (uh…good luck defending that).

All professors are familiar with these sites. The fact that students are paying others to produce work for them is not a secret, at all. Most of us have caught students doing this, or versions of it, and though it’s exhausting and demoralizing, we’ve learned to deal with it semester after semester.

What is academic honesty?

This behavior falls under the heading of “academic honesty.” All colleges and universities have academic honesty policies that address issues like plagiarism and cheating, including serious consequences for violating them. I, for one, am particularly adept at detecting copy/paste/change-a-few-words plagiarism. Frankly, half the time it’s obvious because it’s incomprehensible. As many professors will commiserate, if I wasn’t so good at detecting it, life would be much easier.

Most of us on the policy enforcement side can relate stories with versions of, “But I bought the paper! I didn’t plagiarize, the person who wrote it did! I shouldn’t be held responsible!” In fact, I receive more and more pushback like that every semester: “My cousin wrote the paper for me and I had no idea she plagiarized! She should get in trouble, not me!”

Where does academic dishonesty come from?

We certainly understand that issues like plagiarism may come from lack of confidence in one’s writing skills, being unprepared for college, pressure, inaccessible resources, and the like, but overall, I’ve found it to be a matter of buy-in. Either students buy in to the concept of academic honesty or they don’t, and this has implications beyond school.

How is academic honesty linked to psychology?

I’m less concerned with magically convincing students to follow academic honesty policies than I am in getting them to think about why it is important in the context of psychology. Though I am indeed a prevention practitioner, I’m not naïve enough to think I can change someone’s mind about the value of academic honesty. I am, however, hopeful that those studying psychology will consider the following connections (and then some):

• Learning – You’re not learning much if you’re not doing the work. I once listened to an NPR story about students purchasing papers in which a student said, “I feel like I am doing my own work because I’m using my own money.” Come on. Psychology is all about learning. It’s a topic in every introductory psychology course. It’s usually an entire chapter in introductory psychology textbooks. We have classes specifically focused on it. One of the foundations of learning is that the learner be…involved.
• Morality – “What is moral?” students ask. I can’t answer that, but I am pretty confident that cheating is not. Again, this is a topic that is usually covered in introductory psychology and then over and over again in developmental psychology, social psychology, and more. You’ll even find “moral psychology” as its own field. Psychologist Lawrence Kholberg asked if subjects would steal a drug. Today, he could ask if you’d buy a term paper.
• Future orientation – Personality psychology research suggests that those with a “future orientation” tend to have better outcomes than those with a “present orientation.” The idea is that if you have a future orientation, you tend to, well, look to the future and anticipate future outcomes more than those who are focused solely on the present. While a concern with consequences is associated with mortality (e.g. Kholberg’s theory), the ability or tendency to envision potential consequences is associated with a future orientation. Could there be a more psychological question than, “Is it worth it?”
• Conscientiousness and trust – Conscientiousness is a core personality trait. Trust is essential in development and relationships. Academic dishonesty violates trust and displays low conscientiousness.
• Human services – Students often take psychology because it’s required for medical careers, careers involving working with children, and other human service careers. Go back to the first point about learning. I once had a nurse who tried to inject Heparin directly into my muscle. I had to fight to get her to inject it subcutaneously, as directed. When you work in a hospital, on a general surgery floor, not knowing where to safely inject a blood thinner is alarming. When you don’t do your own work, you don’t have a chance to learn and for a discipline preparing students to work with humans, especially children, everything associated with academic honesty, all of the above, is essential.
• Personal fable – Simply put, this component of David Elkind’s adolescent egocentrism theory suggests that adolescents tend to think they are special and unique. “It might happen to you, but it won’t happen to me.” I can’t tell you how many students are shocked and very angry when caught. In fact, I once read a Twitter thread from professors about the very real dangers associated with catching plagiarism. Many students are still in adolescence , and thinking you’re an exception who won’t get caught is a sure sign.
• Entitlement and violence – Speaking of anger, the idea that you’re special is linked to entitlement , a very psychological concept. In fact, those who study education research “academic entitlement,” in which students feel they should get a good grade just because they attended class or just because they turned in work. Having worked in domestic and sexual violence for a very long time, I know that entitlement is often coupled with violence, as challenges to one’s sense of entitlement frequently result in anger and aggression . Linking homework to violence seems incredible, but it’s a very real possibility.
• Behavioral consistency – As much as we may want to, professors generally can’t share information about other students with other professors. There’s no, “Hey, watch out for this student, they told me their cousin is doing all their homework for them.” However, all academic honesty policies do require some level of reporting to campus administration and they know about behavioral consistency, another psychological concept. This concept suggests that people tend to behave in a consistent manner; they behave in ways that match their past behavior. Need I say more?

One of the main reasons for academic honesty is scientific integrity. I didn’t address it above because, frankly, I find that’s not a very convincing argument, especially when these “pay for us to do your homework” sites target students so aggressively. I found a few more of these sites and recently used their online chat tool. Before I disclosed that I am a professor, and subsequently got kicked off, every single one guaranteed that my professor and my institution “wouldn’t find out.” That’s appalling, not just for the reasons above, but because we do find out, and it can ruin a student’s entire academic career .

Psychology is fascinating and fun. Why wouldn’t you want to learn it, anyway?

Ashley Maier teaches psychology at Los Angeles Valley College.

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Promoting Academic Integrity 

While it is each student’s responsibility to understand and abide by university standards towards individual work and academic integrity, instructors can help students understand their responsibilities through frank classroom conversations that go beyond policy language to shared values. By creating a learning environment that stimulates engagement and designing assessments that are authentic, instructors can minimize the incidence of academic dishonesty.

Academic dishonesty often takes place because students are overwhelmed with the assignments and they don’t have enough time to complete them. So, in addition to being clear about expectations and responsibilities related to academic integrity, instructors should also invite students to  plan accordingly and communicate with them in the event of an emergency. Instructors can arrange extensions and offer solutions in case that students have an emergency. Communication between instructors and students is vital to avoid bad practices and contribute to hold on to the academic integrity values. 

The guidance and strategies included in this resource are applicable to courses in any modality (in-person, online, and hybrid) and includes a discussion of addressing generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT with students. 

On this page:

What is academic integrity, why does academic dishonesty occur, strategies for promoting academic integrity, academic integrity in the age of artificial intelligence, columbia university resources.

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Cite this resource: Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (2020). Promoting Academic Integrity. Columbia University. Retrieved [today’s date] from https://ctl.columbia.edu/resources-and-technology/resources/academic-integrity/

According to the  International Center for Academic Integrity , academic integrity is “a commitment, even in the face of adversity, to six fundamental values: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage.” We commit to these values to honor the intellectual efforts of the global academic community, of which Columbia University is an integral part.

Academic dishonesty in the classroom occurs when one or more values of academic integrity are violated. While some cases of academic dishonesty are committed intentionally, other cases may be a reflection of something deeper that a student is experiencing, such as language or cultural misunderstandings, insufficient or misguided preparation for exams or papers, a lack of confidence in their ability to learn the subject, or perception that course policies are unfair (Bernard and Keith-Spiegel, 2002).

Some other reasons why students may commit academic dishonesty include:

• Cultural or regional differences in what comprises academic dishonesty
• Lack or poor understanding on how to cite sources correctly
• Misunderstanding directions and/or expectations
• Poor time management, procrastination, or disorganization
• Feeling disconnected from the course, subject, instructor, or material
• Fear of failure or lack of confidence in one’s ability
• Anxiety, depression, other mental health problems
• Peer/family pressure to meet unrealistic expectations

Understanding some of these common reasons can help instructors intentionally design their courses and assessments to pre-empt, and hopefully avoid, instances of academic dishonesty. As Thomas Keith states in “Combating Academic Dishonesty, Part 1 – Understanding the Problem.” faculty and administrators should direct their steps towards a “thoughtful, compassionate pedagogy.”

The CTL is here to help!

The CTL can help you think through your course policies and ways to create community, design course assessments, and set up CourseWorks to promote academic integrity. Email [email protected] to schedule your 1-1 consultation .

In his research on cheating in the college classroom, James Lang argues that “the amount of cheating that takes place on our campuses may well depend on the structures of the learning environment” (Lang, 2013a; Lang, 2013b). Instructors have agency in shaping the classroom learning experience; thus, instances of academic dishonesty can be mitigated by efforts to design a supportive, learning-oriented environment (Bertam, 2017 and 2008).

Understanding Student’s Perceptions about Cheating 

It is important to know how students understand critical concepts related to academic integrity such as: cheating, transparency, attribution, intellectual property, etc. As much as they know and understand these concepts, they will be able to show good academic integrity practices.

1. Acknowledge the importance of the research process, not only the outcome, during student learning.

Although the research process is slow and arduous, students should understand the value of the different processes involved during academic writing: investigation, reading, drafting, revising, editing and proof-reading. For Natalie Wexler, using generative Artificial Intelligence tools like ChatGPT as a substitute of writing itself is beyond cheating, an act of self cheating: “The process of writing itself can and should deepen that knowledge and possibly spark new insights” (“‘ Bots’ Can Write Good Essays, But That Doesn’t Make Writing Obsolete” ).

Ways to understand the value of writing their own work without external help, either from external sources, peers or AI, hinge on prioritizing the process over the product:

• Asking students to present drafts of their work and receive feedback can help students to gain confidence to continue researching and writing.
• Allowing students the freedom to choose or change their research topic can increase their investment in an assignment, which can motivate them to conduct their own writing and research rather than relying on AI tools. 

2. Create a supportive learning environment

When students feel supported in a course and connected to instructors and/or TAs and their peers, they may be more comfortable asking for help when they don’t understand course material or if they have fallen behind with an assignment.

Ways to support student learning include:

• Convey confidence  in your students’ ability to succeed in your course from day one of the course (this may ease student anxiety or  imposter syndrome ) and through timely and regular feedback on what they are doing well and areas they can improve on. 
• Explain the relevance  of the course to students; tell them why it is important that they actually learn the material and develop the skills for themselves. Invite students to connect the course to their goals, studies, or intended career trajectories. Research shows that students’ motivation to learn can help deter instances of academic dishonesty (Lang, 2013a). 
• Teach important skills  such as taking notes, summarizing arguments, and citing sources. Students may not have developed these skills, or they may bring bad habits from previous learning experiences. Have students practice these skills through exercises (Gonzalez, 2017). 
• Provide students multiple opportunities to practice challenging skills  and receive immediate feedback in class (e.g., polls, writing activities, “boardwork”). These frequent low-stakes assessments across the semester can “[improve] students’ metacognitive awareness of their learning in the course” (Lang, 2013a, pp. 145). 
• Help students manage their time  on course tasks by scheduling regular check-ins to reduce students’ last minute efforts or frantic emails about assignment requirements. Establish weekly online office hours and/or be open to appointments outside of standard working hours. This is especially important if students are learning in different time zones. Normalize the use of campus resources and academic support resources that can help address issues or anxieties they may be facing.  (See the Columbia University Resources section below for a list of support resources.)
• Provide lists of approved websites and resources  that can be used for additional help or research. This is especially important if on-campus materials are not available to online learners. Articulate permitted online “study” resources to be used as learning tools (and not cheating aids – see McKenzie, 2018) and how to cite those in homework, writing assignments or problem sets. 
• Encourage TAs (if applicable) to establish good relationships  with students and to check-in with you about concerns they may have about students in the course. (Explore the  Working with TAs Online  resource to learn more about partnering with TAs.)

3. Clarify expectations and establish shared values

In addition to including Columbia’s  academic integrity policy  on syllabi, go a step further by creating space in the classroom to discuss your expectations regarding academic integrity and what that looks like in your course context. After all, “what reduces cheating on an honor code campus is not the code itself, but  the dialogue about academic honesty that the code inspires. ” (Lang, 2013a, pp. 172)

Ways to cultivate a shared sense of responsibility for upholding academic integrity include: 

• Ask students to identify goals and expectations  around academic integrity in relation to course learning objectives. 
• Communicate your expectations  and explain your rationale for course policies on artificial intelligence tools, collaborative assignments, late work, proctored exams, missed tests, attendance, extra credit, the use of plagiarism detection software or proctoring software, etc. It will make a difference to take the time at the beginning of the course to explain differences between quoting, summarizing and paraphrasing. Providing examples of good and bad quotation/paraphrasing will help students to know what constitutes good academic writing. 
• Define and provide examples  for what constitutes plagiarism or other forms of academic dishonesty in your course.
• Invite students to generate ideas  for responding to scenarios where they may be pressured to violate the values of academic integrity (e.g.: a friend asks to see their homework, or a friend suggests using chat apps during exams), so students are prepared to react with integrity when suddenly faced with these situations. 
• State clearly when collaboration and group learning is permitted  and when independent work is expected. Collaboration and group work provide great opportunities to build student-student rapport and classroom community, but at the same time, it can lead students to fall into academic misconduct due to unintended collaboration/failure to safeguard their work.
• Discuss the ethical, academic, and legal repercussions  of posting class recordings, notes and/or class materials online (e.g., to sites such as Chegg, GitHub, CourseHero – see Lederman, 2020).
• Partner with TAs  (if applicable) and clarify your expectations of them, how they can help promote shared values around academic integrity, and what they should do in cases of suspected cheating or classroom difficulties

4. Design assessments to maximize learning and minimize pressure

High stakes course assessments can be a source of student anxiety. Creating multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning, and spreading assessments  throughout  the semester can lessen student stress and keep the focus on student learning (see  Darby, 2020  for strategies on assessing students online). As Lang explains, “The more assessments you provide, the less pressure you put on students to do well on any single assignment or exam. If you maintain a clear and consistent academic integrity policy, and ensure that all students caught cheating receive an immediate and substantive penalty, the benefit of cheating on any one assessment will be small, while the potential consequences will be high” (Lang, 2013a and Lang, 2013c). For support with creating online exams, please please refer to our  Creating Online Exams resource .

Ways to enhance one’s assessment approach:

• Design assignments  based on authentic problems in your discipline. Ask students to  apply  course concepts and materials to a problem or concept. 
• Structure assignments into smaller parts  (“scaffolding”) that will be submitted and checked throughout the semester. This scaffolding can also help students learn how to tackle large projects by breaking down the tasks. 
• Break up a single high-stakes exam  into smaller, weekly tests. This can help distribute the weight of grades, and will lessen the pressure students feel when an exam accounts for a large portion of their grade. 
• Give students options  in how their learning is assessed and/or invite students to present their learning in creative ways (e.g., as a poster, video, story, art project, presentation, or oral exam).
• Provide feedback prior to grading  student work. Give students the opportunity to implement the feedback. The revision process encourages student learning, while also lowering the anxiety around any one assignment. 
• Utilize multiple low-stakes assignments  that prepare students for high-stakes assignments or exams to reduce anxiety (e.g., in-class activities, in-class or online discussions)
• Create grading rubrics and share them  with your students and TAs (if applicable) so that expectations are clear, to guide student work, and aid with the feedback process.  
• Use individual student portfolio folders  and provide tailored feedback to students throughout the semester. This can help foster positive relationships, as well as allow you to watch students’ progress on drafts and outlines. You can also ask students to describe how their drafts have changed and offer rationales for those decisions.
• For exams , consider refreshing tests every term, both in terms of organization and content. Additionally, ground your assignments by having students draw connections between course content and the unique experience of your course in terms of time (unique to the semester), place (unique to campus, local community, etc. ), personal (specific student experiences), and interdisciplinary opportunities (other courses students have taken, co-curricular activities, campus events, etc.). (Lang, 2013a, pp. 77).

Since its release, ChatGPT has raised concern in universities across the country about the opportunity it presents for students to cheat and appropriate AI ideas, texts, and even code as their own work. However, there are also potential positive uses of this tool in the learning process–including as a tool for teachers to rely on when creating assessments or working with repetitive and time-consuming tasks.

Possible Advantages of ChatGPT

Due to the novelty of this tool, the possible advantages that might present in the teaching-learning process should be under the control of each instructor since they know exactly what they expect from students’ work. 

Prof. Ethan Mollick teaches innovation and entrepreneurship at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and has been openly sharing on his Twitter account his journey incorporating ChatGPT into his classes. Prof. Mollick advises his students to experiment with this tool, trying and retrying prompts. He recognizes the importance of acknowledging its limits and the risks of violating academic honesty guidelines if the use of this tool is not stated at the end of the assignment.

Prof. Mollick uncovers four possible uses of this AI tool, ranging from using ChatGPT as an all-knowing intern, as a game designer, as an assistant to launch a business, or even to “hallucinate” together ( “Four Paths to the Revelation” ). For Prof. Mollick, ChatGPT is a useful technology to craft initial ideas, as long as the prompts are given within a specific field, include proper context, step-by-step directions and have the proper changes and edits.

Resources for faculty: 

• Academic Integrity Best Practices for Faculty (Columbia College & School of Engineering and Applied Sciences)
• Faculty Statement on Academic Integrity (Columbia College)
• FAQs: Academic Integrity from Columbia Student Conduct and Community Standards 
• Ombuds Office for assistance with academic dishonesty issues. 
• Columbia Center of Artificial Intelligence Technology

Resources for students: 

• Policies from Columbia Student Conduct and Community Standards
• Understanding the Academic Integrity Policy (Columbia College & School of Engineering and Applied Sciences)

Student support resources:

• Maximizing Student Learning Online (Columbia Online)
• Center for Student Advising Tutoring Service (Berick Center for Student Advising)
• Help Rooms and Private Tutors by Department (Berick Center for Student Advising
• Peer Academic Skills Consultants (Berick Center for Student Advising)
• Academic Resource Center (ARC) for School of General Studies
• Center for Engaged Pedagogy (Barnard College)
• Writing Center (for Columbia undergraduate and graduate students)
• Counseling and Psychological Services
• Disability Services

For graduate students: 

• Writing Studio (Graduate School of Arts and Sciences)
• Student Center (Graduate School of Arts and Sciences)
• Teachers College

Columbia University Information Technology (CUIT) CUIT’s Academic Services provides services that can be used by instructors in their courses such as Turnitin , a plagiarism detection service and online proctoring services such as Proctorio , a remote proctoring service that monitors students taking virtual exams through CourseWorks. 

Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) The CTL can help you think through your course policies, ways to create community, design course assessments, and setting up CourseWorks to promote integrity, among other teaching and learning facets. To schedule a one-on-one consultation, please contact the CTL at [email protected] . 

References 

Bernard, W. Jr. and Keith-Spiegel, P. (2002).  Academic Dishonesty: An Educator’s Guide . Mahwah, NJ: Psychology Press.

Bertram Gallant, T. (2017).  Academic Integrity as a Teaching and Learning Issue: From Theory to Practice .  Theory Into Practice,  56(2), 88-94.

Bertram Gallant, T. (Ed.). (2008).  Academic Integrity in the Twenty-First Century: A Teaching and Learning Imperative .  ASHE Higher Education Report . 33(5), 1-143. 

Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (2020).  Creating Online Exams . 

Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (2020).  Working with TAs online . 

Darby, F. (2020).  7 Ways to Assess Students Online and Minimize Cheating .  The Chronicle of Higher Education.  

Gonzalez, J. (2017, February).  Teaching Students to Avoid Plagiarism . Cult of Pedagogy, 26.

International Center for Academic Integrity (2023).  Fundamental Values of Academic Integrity .

International Center on Academic Integrity (2023).  https://academicintegrity.org/

Keith, T. Combating Academic Dishonesty, Part 1 – Understanding the Problem. The University of Chicago. (2022, Feb 16).

Lang, J.M. (2013a).  Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty . Harvard University Press.

Lang, J. M. (2013b).  Cheating Lessons, Part 1 .  The Chronicle of Higher Education. 

Lang, J. M. (2013c).  Cheating Lessons, Part 2 .  The Chronicle of Higher Education. 

Lederman, D. (2020, February 19).  Course Hero Woos Professors . Inside Higher Ed. 

McKenzie, L. (2018, May 8).  Learning Tool or Cheating Aid?   Inside Higher Ed.

Marche, S. (2022, Dec 6). The College Essay is Dead. The Atlantic.

Mollick, E. (2023, Jan 17). All my Classes Suddenly Became AI Classes. One Useful Thing.

Mollick, Ethan. (2022, Dic 8). Four Paths to the Revelation. One Useful Thing.

Wexler, N. Bots’ Can Write Good Essays, But That Doesn’t Make Writing Obsolete. Minding the Gap.

Additional Resources

Bretag, T. (Ed.). (2016). Handbook of Academic Integrity. Singapore: Springer Publishing.

Ormand, C. (2017 March 6).  SAGE Musings: Minimizing and Dealing with Academic Dishonesty . SAGE 2YC: 2YC Faculty as Agents of Change.

WCET (2009).  Best Practice Strategies to Promote Academic Integrity in Online Education .

Thomas, K.  (2022 February 16). Combating Academic Dishonesty, Part 1 – Understanding the Problem. The University of Chicago. Academic Technology Solutions.

______. (2022 February 25). Combating Academic Dishonesty, Part 2: Small Steps to Discourage Academic Dishonesty. The University of Chicago. Academic Technology Solutions.

______.  (2022 April 28). Combating Academic Dishonesty, Part 3: Towards a Pedagogy of Academic Integrity. The University of Chicago. Academic Technology Solutions.

______.  (2022 June 7). Combating Academic Dishonesty, Part 4: Library Services to Support Academic Honesty. The University of Chicago. Academic Technology Solutions.

Acknowledgement

This resource was adapted from the faculty booklet  Promoting Academic Integrity & Preventing Academic Dishonesty: Best Practices at Columbia University  developed by Victoria Malaney Brown, Director of Academic Integrity at Columbia College and Columbia Engineering, Abigail MacBain and Ramón Flores Pinedo, PhD students in GSAS. We would like to thank them for their extensive support in creating this academic integrity resource.

Want to communicate your expectations around AI tools?

See the CTL’s resource “Considerations for AI Tools in the Classroom.”

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9.7: Academic Honesty

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Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Define academic honesty and common forms of academic dishonesty
• Identify common scenarios that can lead to academic dishonesty, and possible consequences
• Identify strategies for avoiding plagiarism

Academic Honesty and Dishonesty

At most educational institutions, “academic honesty” means demonstrating and upholding the highest integrity and honesty in all the academic work that you do. In short, it means doing your own work and not cheating, and not presenting the work of others as your own.

The following are some common forms of academic dishonesty prohibited by most academic institutions:

Cheating can take the form of crib notes, looking over someone’s shoulder during an exam, or any forbidden sharing of information between students regarding an exam or exercise. Many elaborate methods of cheating have been developed over the years—from hiding notes in the bathroom toilet tank to storing information in graphing calculators, pagers, cell phones, and other electronic devices. Cheating differs from most other forms of academic dishonesty, in that people can engage in it without benefiting themselves academically at all. For example, a student who illicitly telegraphed answers to a friend during a test would be cheating, even though the student’s own work is in no way affected.

Deception is providing false information to an instructor concerning an academic assignment. Examples of this include taking more time on a take-home test than is allowed, giving a dishonest excuse when asking for a deadline extension, or falsely claiming to have submitted work.

Fabrication

Fabrication is the falsification of data, information, or citations in an academic assignment. This includes making up citations to back up arguments or inventing quotations. Fabrication is most common in the natural sciences, where students sometimes falsify data to make experiments “work” or false claims are made about the research performed.

Plagiarism, as defined in the 1995 Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary , is the “use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work.” [1]  In an academic setting, it is seen as the adoption or reproduction of original intellectual creations (such as concepts, ideas, methods, pieces of information or expressions, etc.) of another author (whether an individual, group, or organization) without proper acknowledgment. This can range from borrowing a particular phrase or sentence to paraphrasing someone else’s original idea without citing it. Today, in our networked digital world, the most common form of plagiarism is copying and pasting online material without crediting the source.

Common Forms of Plagiarism

According to “The Reality and Solution of College Plagiarism” created by the Health Informatics department of the University of Illinois at Chicago, there are ten main forms of plagiarism that students commit:

• Submitting someone else’s work as their own.
• Taking passages from their own previous work without adding citations.
• Rewriting someone’s work without properly citing sources.
• Using quotations, but not citing the source.
• Interweaving various sources together in the work without citing.
• Citing some, but not all passages that should be cited.
• Melding together cited and uncited sections of the piece.
• Providing proper citations, but failing to change the structure and wording of the borrowed ideas enough.
• Inaccurately citing the source.
• Relying too heavily on other people’s work. Failing to bring original thought into the text.

As a college student, you are now a member of a scholarly community that values other people’s ideas. In fact, you will routinely be asked to reference and discuss other people’s thoughts and writing in the course of producing your own work. That’s why it’s so important to understand what plagiarism is and steps you can take to avoid it.

Avoiding Plagiarism

Below are some useful guidelines to help you avoid plagiarism and show academic honesty in your work:

• Quotes: If you quote another work directly in your work, cite your source.
• Paraphrase:  If put someone else’s idea into your own words, you still need to cite the author.
• Visual Materials: If you cite statistics, graphs, or charts from a study, cite the source. Keep in mind that if you didn’t do the original research, then you need to credit the person(s) or institution, etc. that did.

The easiest way to make sure you don’t accidentally plagiarize someone else’s work is by taking careful notes as you research. If you are doing research on the Web, be sure to copy and paste the links into your notes so can keep track of the sites you’re visiting. Be sure to list all the sources you consult.

There are many handy online tools to help you create and track references as you go. For example, you can try using  Son of Citation Machine . Keeping careful notes will not only help you avoid inadvertent plagiarism; it will also help you if you need to return to a source later (to check or get more information). If you use citation tools like Son of Citation, be sure to check the accuracy of the citations before you submit your assignment.

Lastly, if you’re in doubt about whether something constitutes plagiarism, cite the source or leave the material out. Better still, ask for help. Most colleges have a writing center, a tutoring center, and a library where students can get help with their writing. Taking the time to seek advice is better than getting in trouble for not attributing your sources. Be honest about your ideas, and give credit where it’s due.

Consequences of Plagiarism

In the academic world, plagiarism by students is usually considered a very serious offense that can result in punishments such as a failing grade on the particular assignment, the entire course, or even being expelled from the institution. Individual instructors and courses may have their own policies regarding academic honesty and plagiarism; statements of these can usually be found in the course syllabus or online course description.

Activity: Gather Campus Resources

• Indiana University has a clever list of different types of plagiarism. Their names for different types of plagiarism can help you learn how to avoid situations of academic dishonesty. Go to this link and read through the various examples.  Jot down a few notes on examples that are new to you.
• Start by finding information about plagiarism in one of your courses. You may find information on the course syllabus and/or the course Web site. You may want to bookmark this information or make a note to yourself. Knowing your rights as a student may help if there is a misunderstanding.

https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/904

• Stepchyshyn, Vera, and Robert S. Nelson. Library Plagiarism Policies . Chicago: College Library Information Packet Committee, College Libraries Section, Association of College and Research Libraries, 2007. Print. P. 65. ↵

Contributors and Attributions

• Academic Honesty. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Image of shortcutting sign. Authored by : Stephen Coles. Located at : https://flic.kr/p/pnpwKy . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Academic Dishonesty. Provided by : Wikipedia. Located at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_dishonesty#cite_note-22 . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Plagiarism. Provided by : Wikipedia. Located at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

Exploring Academic Integrity in Your Research: A Tutorial

• 2 - Scholarly Conversation
• 3 - Scholarly Conversation & Justice
• 4 - LACE at the University of Oregon
• 5 - Academic Discourse
• 6 - Student Responsibilities
• 7 - Academic Discourse & Student Success

2 - Academic Honesty

• 3 - Academic Honesty
• 4 - Academic Dishonesty
• 5 - Academic Dishonesty
• 6 - Academic Dishonesty
• 7 - Academic Dishonesty
• 8 - Academic Dishonesty
• 9 - Academic Dishonesty
• 10 - Academic Dishonesty
• 11 - Plagiarism
• 12 - Plagiarism
• 13 - Paraphrasing
• 14 - Paraphrasing
• 15 - Consequences
• 16 - Consequences
• 17 - Review
• 2 - Attribution
• 3 - Citations
• 4 - Citations
• 5 - Plagiarism
• 6 - Plagiarism
• 7 - To Cite or Not?
• 8 - To Cite or Not?
• 9 - To Cite or Not?
• 10 - To Cite or Not?
• 11 - To Cite or Not?
• 12 - To Cite or Not?
• 13 - Citation Styles
• 14 - Citation Styles
• 15 - Citation Management
• 16 - Citation Management
• 2 - Copyright
• 3 - Copyright
• 3.5-Copyright
• 4 - Copyright
• 5 - Copyright
• 6 - Fair Use
• 7 - Fair Use
• 8 - Permissions
• 9 - Permissions
• 10 - Resources
• 11 - Review
• More Resources

What is academic honesty?

Academic honesty ensures acknowledgement of other people’s hard work and thought.  The International Center for Academic Integrity defines it as “a commitment, even in the face of adversity, to six fundamental values: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage. From these values flow principles of behavior that enable academic communities to translate ideals to action.”

Different cultures and traditions often have distinct definitions of what behaviors constitute academic honesty. For example, in some cultures, it is considered a sign of respect to use the exact wording of a well-known thinker, and attribution is considered unnecessary. However, that is not an accepted practice for scholars in the United States.

To learn more about cultural differences with regards to academic honesty, check out this book: Howard, Rebecca Moore. Standing in the Shadow of Giants : Plagiarists, Authors, Collaborators . Stamford, Conn.: Ablex Pub., c1999.

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The research process on the Extended Essay: Academic Honesty

• Extended essay and the research process
• Task definition
• Identify Keywords
• Find background information
• Manage your time
• Locate Books
• Locate Articles
• Search Engines, Repositories, & Directories
• Databases and Websites by subject
• 4. Organize
• Citations and References
• How to Avoid Colloquial (Informal) Writing
• Academic Honesty
• 6. Reflect/Evaluate

Academic honesty

Singapore International School, guided by the philosophy of the IB, places great value on the ethical qualities of personal integrity and academic honesty. Academic honesty is expected of all members of the school community; students, faculty, administration and parents. We are guided in our expectations and practices by two of the Learner Profile attributes which describe students as:

PRINCIPLED : They act with integrity and honesty, with a strong sense of fairness, justice and respect for the dignity of the individual, groups and communities. They take responsibility for their own actions and the consequences that accompany them.

 REFLECTIVE : They give thoughtful consideration to their own learning and experience. They are able to assess and understand their strengths and limitations in order to support their learning and personal development.

It is the policy of Singapore International School that:

• All Diploma Programme students understand the basic meaning and significance of academic honesty
• All work produced by Diploma Programme students is their own, authentic work
• All such authentic work has the ideas and words of others fully acknowledged
• Students understand and obey the rules relating to proper conduct of examinations
• Students understand the difference between collaboration and collusion, and that it is unacceptable to present work arrived at through a process of collusion
• The policy refers to all assignments set and completed in school or at home, ranging from basic pieces of homework to formal assessments required by the IB

The aim of this policy is to:

• Promote good academic practice and a school culture that actively encourages academic honesty
•  Enable students to understand what constitutes academic honesty and dishonesty
•  Encourage students to look to their teachers, supervisors and coordinator for support when completing assessed work in order to prevent any possible form of malpractice (See page 6 for further details)
•  Ensure that students understand the importance of acknowledging accurately and honestly all ideas and work of others
•  Explain to students that they have an important role in ensuring that their work is ‘academically honest’
•  Impart to students that plagiarism is a serious academic offence for which Copenhagen International School shows no tolerance
•  Explain to students precisely what sanctions will be imposed should they be found guilty of malpractice.

What is 'Academic Honesty'?

Academic honesty refers to:

• Proper conduct in relation to the conduct of examinations
•  The full acknowledgement of the original authorship and ownership of creative material
•  The production of ‘authentic’ pieces of work
•  The protection of all forms of intellectual property – which include forms of intellectual and creative expression, as well as patents, registered designs, trademarks, moral rights and copyright

Academic Dishonesty, therefore, involves:

• Collusion ·
•  Duplication of work
•  All forms of malpractice

What is ‘Malpractice’ ?

Malpractice is behaviour that results in, or may result in the candidate or any other candidate gaining an unfair advantage in one or more assessment component.

Malpractice may include:

• Plagiarism: The representation of the ideas or work of another as the candidate’s own
•  Collusion: Supporting malpractice by another candidate – allowing one’s work to be copied or submitted for assessment by another
•  Duplication of work: The presentation of the same work for different parts of the diploma. (An example would involve submitting the same piece of work for a History Extended Essay and the History internal assessment)

Malpractice also includes :

• Making up data for an assignment
•  Falsifying a CAS record
•  Taking unauthorized material into the examination room, including a mobile phone, an electronic device, own rough paper, notes … 
• Misbehaving during an exam, including any attempt to disrupt the examination or distract another candidate
•  Copying the work of another candidate
•  Referring to or attempting to refer to, unauthorized material that is related to the examination
•   Failing to comply with the instructions of the invigilator or other member of the school’s staff responsible for the conduct of an examination
•  Impersonating another candidate
• Including offensive material in a script
•  Stealing examination papers
•  Disclosing or discussing the content of an examination paper with a person outside the immediate community within 24 hours after the examination 
• Using an unauthorized calculator during an examination
•  Concealing and/or using unauthorized software on a graphic calculator, particularly, but not only, during examinations

Defining forms of malpractice

· Collusion/Collaboration

 Collaboration involves working together with other students. There are occasions where collaboration with other candidates is permitted or actively encouraged. Nevertheless, the final work must be produced independently, despite the fact that it may be based on similar data. This means that the abstract, introduction, content, conclusion or summary of a piece of work must be written in each candidate’s own words and cannot therefore be the same as another candidate’s. Working together is collaboration. Copying someone else’s work is collusion. Even if you have ‘collaborated’ with another student, the work you present must be your own. Collusion is malpractice and will be penalized.

 · Plagiarism

 Plagiarism is passing off someone else’s work, writing, thoughts, visuals, graphics, music and ideas as your own. Plagiarized work is work which fails to acknowledge the sources which it uses or upon which it is based. Plagiarism is a clear breach of academic honesty. It is also a criminal offence.

What is paraphrasing?

Paraphrasing is writing a piece of text out in your own words. You are allowed to do this, but you must acknowledge the source you have used

Acknowledging sources

How can I make sure that I am not plagiarizing material?

• The simplest method of avoiding plagiarism is to honestly, accurately and clearly acknowledge, by references in the body of your work, and/or in a bibliography at the end, each and every piece of material you used in the production of your work.
•  All ideas and work of other persons, regardless of their source, must be acknowledged
•  CD Rom, email messages, web sites on the Internet and any other electronic media must be treated in the same way as books and journals 
• The sources of all photographs, maps, illustrations, computer programs, data, graphs, audio-visual and similar material must be acknowledged
•  Passages that are quoted verbatim must be enclosed within quotation marks and references provided
•  All works of art, film, dance, music, theatre arts or visual arts must have their source/origin acknowledged
•  Always use Turnitin in accordance with the school’s regulations.
• Material cannot be paraphrased without acknowledging the source The SIS Library libguides contains links to sites that give detailed instructions on citing sources using different styles such as APA, MLA, Chicago and more. Many of the sites also provide information on grammar and mechanics. Singapore International School prefers the use of the MLA 8 style when acknowledging sources.

OWL: Avoiding Plagiarism

Academic Honesty in the IB Diploma

• Academic Honesty in DP
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Home — Essay Samples — Education — Academic Dishonesty — Why is Academic Honesty so Important?

Why is Academic Honesty so Important?

• Categories: Academic Dishonesty Cheating

About this sample

Words: 679 |

Published: Dec 3, 2020

Words: 679 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Works Cited:

• Foster Wallace, D. (2005). This is water: Some thoughts, delivered on a significant occasion, about living a compassionate life. Little, Brown.
• Gardner, J. (2011). "This is Water" by David Foster Wallace. The New York Review of Books, 58(10), 51-52.
• Gunnarsson, B. L. (2016). Persuasive language and thought-provoking arguments in David Foster Wallace's “This Is Water” commencement speech. Argumentation and Advocacy, 53(3), 214-229.
• Lynch, J. J. (2017). “This Is Water” by David Foster Wallace: A rhetorical analysis. Journal of the Western States Communication Association, 45(1), 21-36.
• Maxwell, J. C. (2013). Developing the leader within you. HarperCollins Leadership.
• Pinker, S. (2014). The sense of style: The thinking person’s guide to writing in the 21st century. Penguin Books.
• Ramage, J. D., Bean, J. C., & Johnson, J. (2018). Writing arguments: A rhetoric with readings. Pearson.
• Ramage, J. D., Bean, J. C., & Johnson, J. (2020). The Allyn & Bacon guide to writing. Pearson.
• Vallor, S. (2018). Technology and the virtues: A philosophical guide to a future worth wanting. Oxford University Press.
• Williams, J. M. (2014). The world beyond your head: On becoming an individual in an age of distraction. Penguin Books.

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Academic Integrity vs. Academic Dishonesty

Published on March 10, 2022 by Tegan George and Jack Caulfield. Revised on April 13, 2023.

Academic integrity  is the value of being honest, ethical, and thorough in your academic work. It allows readers to trust that you aren’t misrepresenting your findings or taking credit for the work of others.

Academic dishonesty (or academic misconduct) refers to actions that undermine academic integrity. It typically refers to some form of plagiarism , ranging from serious offenses like purchasing a pre-written essay to milder ones like accidental citation errors. Most of which are easy to detect with a plagiarism checker .

These concepts are also essential in the world of professional academic research and publishing. In this context, accusations of misconduct can have serious legal and reputational consequences.

Table of contents

Types of academic dishonesty, why does academic integrity matter, examples of academic dishonesty, frequently asked questions about plagiarism.

While plagiarism is the main offense you’ll hear about, academic dishonesty comes in many forms that vary extensively in severity, from faking an illness to buying an essay.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Most students are clear that academic integrity is important, but dishonesty is still common.

There are various reasons you might be tempted to resort to academic dishonesty: pressure to achieve, time management struggles, or difficulty with a course. But academic dishonesty hurts you, your peers, and the learning process. It’s:

• Unfair to the plagiarized author
• Unfair to other students who did not cheat
• Damaging to your own learning
• Harmful if published research contains misleading information
• Dangerous if you don’t properly learn the fundamentals in some contexts (e.g., lab work)

The consequences depend on the severity of the offense and your institution’s policies. They can range from a warning for a first offense to a failing grade in a course to expulsion from your university.

• Faking illness to skip a class
• Asking for a classmate’s notes from a special review session held by your professor that you did not attend
• Crowdsourcing or collaborating with others on a homework assignment
• Citing a source you didn’t actually read in a paper
• Cheating on a pop quiz
• Peeking at your notes on a take-home exam that was supposed to be closed-book
• Resubmitting a paper that you had already submitted for a different course (self-plagiarism)
• Forging a doctor’s note to get an extension on an assignment
• Fabricating experimental results or data to prove your hypothesis in a lab environment
• Buying a pre-written essay online or answers to a test
• Falsifying a family emergency to get out of taking a final exam
• Taking a test for a friend

Academic integrity means being honest, ethical, and thorough in your academic work. To maintain academic integrity, you should avoid misleading your readers about any part of your research and refrain from offenses like plagiarism and contract cheating, which are examples of academic misconduct.

Academic dishonesty refers to deceitful or misleading behavior in an academic setting. Academic dishonesty can occur intentionally or unintentionally, and varies in severity.

It can encompass paying for a pre-written essay, cheating on an exam, or committing plagiarism . It can also include helping others cheat, copying a friend’s homework answers, or even pretending to be sick to miss an exam.

Academic dishonesty doesn’t just occur in a classroom setting, but also in research and other academic-adjacent fields.

Consequences of academic dishonesty depend on the severity of the offense and your institution’s policy. They can range from a warning for a first offense to a failing grade in a course to expulsion from your university.

For those in certain fields, such as nursing, engineering, or lab sciences, not learning fundamentals properly can directly impact the health and safety of others. For those working in academia or research, academic dishonesty impacts your professional reputation, leading others to doubt your future work.

Academic dishonesty can be intentional or unintentional, ranging from something as simple as claiming to have read something you didn’t to copying your neighbor’s answers on an exam.

You can commit academic dishonesty with the best of intentions, such as helping a friend cheat on a paper. Severe academic dishonesty can include buying a pre-written essay or the answers to a multiple-choice test, or falsifying a medical emergency to avoid taking a final exam.

The consequences of plagiarism vary depending on the type of plagiarism and the context in which it occurs. For example, submitting a whole paper by someone else will have the most severe consequences, while accidental citation errors are considered less serious.

If you’re a student, then you might fail the course, be suspended or expelled, or be obligated to attend a workshop on plagiarism. It depends on whether it’s your first offense or you’ve done it before.

As an academic or professional, plagiarizing seriously damages your reputation. You might also lose your research funding or your job, and you could even face legal consequences for copyright infringement.

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George, T. & Caulfield, J. (2023, April 13). Academic Integrity vs. Academic Dishonesty. Scribbr. Retrieved April 2, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/plagiarism/academic-dishonesty/

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Using Sources, Avoiding Plagiarism, and Academic Honesty

A key expectation of academic work is that what you submit is your own, and that you appropriately source words and ideas that are not your own. Since academic writing involves building on the ideas of others, knowing how to integrate that material with your own thinking is a fundamental skill for success. Writers who simply haven’t practiced that skill may find themselves submitting papers with unintentional plagiarism (which is by far the most common). The resources below explain what plagiarism is, and how to avoid it through careful use of source material, rhetoric, and citations. Please feel free to email us with any thoughts or suggestions!

What is Plagiarism?

Put simply, plagiarism is when you claim the words or ideas of others as your own. Since all work you submit during an academic program is presumed to be yours, even leaving out a citation can lead to unintentional plagiarism. Avoiding plagiarism means knowing how to integrate sources correctly into your writing, understanding the rules of the style guide you’re using, and having a big-picture understanding of academic honesty: the “why” behind all those seemingly arbitrary rules.

• Antioch University Plagiarism Policy

Integrating Sources

Any time you use someone else’s words or ideas (which you do in most academic papers), you need to be careful to track them through your research and drafting phases, attribute them in your writing phases, and ensure they are correctly cited during your final polishing phases. Integrating sources well starts with research–taking good notes, actively synthesizing as you read, and making sure you put other people’s words in quotes in your notes are all ways to avoid accidental plagiarism down the line. As you start to write, you’ll want to use quotations, paraphrases, and syntheses to describe other people’s ideas. Each integrates sources in a different way, and academic writers need to know how to do all three, and when each is appropriate. As you finish your paper, you need to able to include citations in a consistent and appropriate format so that readers of your work can locate the source you used for a given idea. In academic writing, it is expected that your work fits into an ongoing conversation; citing your sources helps your readers know who contributed before you, and how you used their ideas. Reading and Doing Research

• Active Reading Strategies
• Critical Reading Exercises
• Gathering Information
• Evaluating Research Generally
• Evaluating Empirical Research
• The Art of Integrating Sources
• Using Quotations
• A Short Guide to Paraphrasing

Style and Citations

Regardless of your field and specialty, you can rest assured that you will need to cite your sources and abide by the rules of a style guide. These resources focus on helping you manage those expectations, especially around the particulars of things like APA style.

• Citation Managers
• Antioch Seattle MA Psych Style Guidelines
• An Overview of APA Style
• Common Mistakes in APA Style

Other Resources:

• Visit the American Psychological Association website for updated information regarding APA style and formatting guidelines for writing in the psychology and social sciences.
• Visit the Modern Language Association website for updated information regarding MLA style and formatting guidelines for writing in the humanities.

  Academic Honesty

Part of academic writing is also managing your time and working sufficiently in advance to do your work well. If you are working at the last minute or find yourself committed, you may find yourself tempted to leave out a citation, to appropriate a quote, or even to copy and paste text from a source without attribution. While everyone understands the desperation that can lead to academic dishonesty, the choice to engage in intentional plagiarism is a serious breach of conduct with serious consequences. In an academic program, it can lead to your being put on academic probation or kicked out of the University. Beyond student writing, plagiarism can cause you to lose all credibility in your field and destroy your academic or professional career.

Healthy Approaches to Plagiarism: A Collaborative Response

Dorothy Capers,  AUS PsyD Student & Anne Maxham, Ph.D., Director of Writing Support   Plagiarism today goes beyond the flagrant taking of another’s piece of writing and turning it as your own. With the internet, facile copying and pasting of others’ words can wreak havoc on your academic integrity.

Caveat Scriptor!

(Writer Beware!)

Overview: Plagiarism is fundamentally the act of taking others’ words and using them as your own. The range of what identifies as plagiarism is complex: it may be intentional or unintentional; it may be in the form of paraphrases without citing the source, or word for word (seven or more words in sequence from the original source); or padding your writing with longer passages without citations. Being charged with “academic dishonesty” or “plagiarism” is a gut-wrenching experience that no student wants to risk. The impact of being questioned about your authenticity can result in losing confidence as a writer and even have you doubt your purpose in studying at the university. Beyond the emotional effects, other consequences can be dire, and sometimes result in failing the class, being put on academic probation, and worst of all expulsion from the university. All writers need to take precautions and make efforts to ensure that your writing is “all yours” and that you properly cite others’ words and ideas. One scenario of why it can happen to anyone: Many of us now compose directly on the computer and frequently have multiple documents opened at any given time. We “read” to find information to use in our writing. Frequently, we jump from online articles to our own document, copying and pasting material. At times, we’re writing papers with quick deadlines, and we might rush through this all-important step of first understanding the article content. Rather than fully “digesting texts,” we read for important information and key points to include in the paper. Our notes become lifted passages from texts rather than summarizing in our own words. We research and read for “context” rather than the “content”; that is, we read to finish our writing rather than fully understanding the topic or content. What you can do: To avoid unintentional plagiarism, stop long enough in your reading to think about what the author is saying. Put it in your own words. There’s an inherent danger in copying text and pasting into your own notes. And in doing so, writers can naively create a “fertile environment” for plagiarism to occur.  And it happens not just in academia. Take a look at what happened to well-known authors, and the consequences can ruin a career. Or musicians and the long lawsuits that follow. Remember, James Frey and the scandal after Oprah had selected his Million Little Pieces as one of her “reads”? Oprah felt betrayed and used. Her anger was palpable when she publicly lambasted him in her program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewC-KIe5qng http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2011/1208/5-famous-plagiarism-and-fraud-accusations-in-the-book-world/Alex-Haley And recently, Neil Gorsuch was accused of plagiarizing parts of his book: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/gorsuch-writings-supreme-court-236891 So, we’ve developed this resource to help students take proactive measures to be academically honest. Before we move into the nitty gritty, we have some fundamentals:

• First, create a “working bibliography” of your resources. Put a number or a letter next to each and use that notation next to your quotes & paraphrases. That way, the sources for all quotes/paraphrases are identified.
• Cite all direct quotes, paraphrases, statistics, and unique ideas. Take the extra time to put quotation marks around words that are not yours. And don’t forget to post the page number of all direct quotes.
• direct quotes = citation
• paraphrases = citation
• statistics = citation
• unique concepts = citation
• when in doubt = citation
• If you’re not sure, you should seek writing support with your writing center or the VWC.

The Academic Conversation For those who want to write original work, learning how to enter the academic conversation is fundamental. While the academy is a place for active debate, most of us read materials given to us as passive “voyeurs” of a text. Of course, this is saying something about the implicit/explicit power dynamic between the faculty member and the student. Do we read to highlight what we think the faculty member wants us to read? Or do we read to wrestle with ideas? Frankly, given the reality that most of us read multiple texts each week, we’re lucky if we “digest” even one text.  The fact that most of us read – or submit a text— seldom questioning its content, style, or the intent of the author shows that we may be disempowered in the academic enterprise. Many students don’t realize that writing forces a reader to “digest” the material and to summarize as well as validate assertions by referring to the experts. So, active reading is essential in bringing the reader into the discourse. Since there are deep and multiple connections between reading and writing, we all need to learn and use strategies of active, critical reading (See the VWC Resources: “ Active Reading Strategies” and “ Critical Reading Exercises” )

If we think about academic reading and writing as a conversation, students have to carry the researchers forward in the conversation, even those with opposing views. Writing a paper is entering the conversation in an attempt to inform the reader of your unique learning through summarizing, paraphrasing, and citing other researchers. Ways to ensure Academic Authenticity: Validating that your writing is authentically yours and accurately reflecting your understanding of the topic begins early in your writing process.  Before writing, verify that you understand the assignment. Ask questions and request examples from the faculty member. Remember, what your instructors wants in an assignment is most important for your success. If you don’t understand, ask classmates and go to the writing center for additional support. Taking Notes: Take “real notes”: Don’t just lift full lines or passages from your reading. Be sure to write all notes in your own words, or put quotes around texts. If you’ve paraphrased, you still need to cite. So, put ( ) and the author, date, pg number. Defining the goals of your literature review will guide both your reading and your note-taking.   Peg Single Boyle, author of Demystifying Dissertation Writing (2009), offers a clear approach to “Citable Notetaking”:

• Pre-read your articles before taking notes
• Keep track of what’s summarized, paraphrased, or quoted.
• Choose  consistent formats for your notes. For example: If more than one article set up a spreadsheet to identify authors, article theme and quotes and paraphrases. This will help with putting your outline together when you start to write  (p 55-78).

The Virtual Writing Center has other resources available at the top of this page to help guide you to academic success. Tutorials: Want to see how much you know or don’t know about plagiarism? Spend a productive hour watching the tutorials and then take the “Certification Test” at the Indiana University resource: Tutorial: https://www.indiana.edu/~academy/firstPrinciples/tutorials/index.html Test: https://www.indiana.edu/~academy/firstPrinciples/certificationTests/index.html Finally: As a member of a discipline, you’re responsible to learn the style sheet of your field of practice (APA, Chicago, MLA, etc.).  Use online resources and manuals relevant to your field. If you’re unclear, seek help and work one-one with Mentor/VWC.  If you want professional help, go to the AU Writers’ Exchange (wex.antioch.edu).  Also review this handy checklist for APA Style that was designed for writers to refer to prior to submitting their papers. Writing support is designed to help students. With friendly student peer consultants, you may talk about your writing and get the support you need. You’re not alone.    References Boyle, P.S. (2009).  Demystifying dissertation writing. Stylus Pub: New York.

Resources for Faculty

• Responding to Plagiarism
• Plagiarism Checklist for Faculty

Academic Resources: Bronwyn T. Williams (2008). Trust, betrayal, and authorship: Plagiarism and how we perceive students.   Journal of Adolescent and and Adult Literacy 51 :4, 350 – 354. Abstract: Emotional responses to plagiarism are rarely addressed in professional literature that focuses on ethics and good teaching practices. Yet, the emotions that are unleashed by cases of plagiarism, or suspicions of plagiarism, influence how we perceive our students and how we approach teaching them. Such responses have been complicated by online plagiarism-detection services that emphasize surveillance and detection. My opposition to such plagiarism software services grows from the conviction that if we use them we are not only poisoning classroom relationships, but also we are missing important opportunities for teaching.

Howard, R., & Robillard, A. (2008). Pluralizing plagiarism : Identities, contexts, pedagogies . Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook. Pluralizing Plagiarism offers multiple answers to this question — answers that insist on taking into account the rhetorical situations in which plagiarism occurs. While most scholarly publications on plagiarism mirror mass media’s attempts to reduce the issue to simple black-and-white statements, the contributors to Pluralizing Plagiarism recognize that it takes place not in universalized realms of good and bad, but in specific contexts in which students’ cultural backgrounds often play a role. Teachers concerned about plagiarism can best address the issue in the classroom — especially the first-year composition classroom — as part of writing pedagogy and not just as a matter for punishment and prohibition. . . “–Back cover.

Price, M. (2002). Beyond “Gotcha!”: Situating plagiarism in policy and pedagogy. College Composition and Communication, 54 (1), 88-115 Abstract:Plagiarism is difficult, if not impossible, to define. In this paper, I argue for a context-sensitive understanding of plagiarism by analyzing a set of written institutional policies and suggesting ways that they might be revised. In closing, I offer examples of classroom practices to help teach a concept of plagiarism as situated in context.

Essay Writing & Academic Honesty

Plagiarism is a serious offence and is dealt with strictly in this School. It refers to the passing off of another person’s work as your own.  It includes, but is not limited to the following:

• Using an entire paper written by someone else as your own.
• Taking sentences or paragraphs from other papers or texts and including them in your paper without placing quotation marks around them, together with the source, including page numbers. (While exact quotations of lines or paragraphs are usually appropriate within a paper, they should take up no more than a very small percentage of the entire paper.).
• Paraphrasing lines or paragraphs from another paper or text without attributing the source of the ideas through use of references.
• Handing in the same or a very similar paper to two separate courses also constitutes an academic offence.

Most students who plagiarize do so because they try to write their essays at the last minute. Good essay writing requires time. If students cannot get their work in on time, they should approach their professors for an extension.

Please note the following:

• Familiar yourself with the Senate Policy on Academic Honesty
• Test your knowledge of plagiarism and academic integrity with this online tutorial .
• Students found guilty of such an infraction may have a permanent record of their receiving an “F” placed on their transcripts.
• This “F” would remain on record even if the course is repeated and an additional course grade is received and recorded.
• It will be clear to any reader of the transcript that the background to receiving an “F” being placed on a transcript in such a manner is one of academic dishonesty.
• You not only jeopardize your passing of this course but you also may jeopardize your entire future by engaging in academic dishonesty.

How to Write an Argumentative Essay

The following outline attempts to show you how to construct a good essay: it represents, in as simple a form as possible, the basic pattern to follow in putting together any “argument paper” whether this paper is a class essay, a dissertation, or an article designed for publication. An “argument paper” is best defined simply as a paper which states a thesis, or says something, and attempts to back up or support this thesis with evidence or arguments which tend to convince the reader of the truth and validity of this thesis; this kind of paper, we may say, is distinct from the kind of paper which merely presents information. (Also, the argument paper is more interesting, both to write and to read). These instructions are presented in outline form merely to make it more apparent that a good essay is put together step by step. If you are writing outside of class you will be able to follow this outline at your leisure; if you are writing in class, or answering an essay question on an exam, you still should mentally follow this outline to construct your essay before you start to write.

Form a good, strong thesis sentence, stating what you propose to show.

This is the most important part of the whole process, the foundation upon which your whole essay is constructed, and it must be the first thing done; until you have written the thesis sentence it is useless to try writing anything else. Given a topic, assemble your material and review it (mentally if in class or during an exam) until you are familiar enough with this material to form an opinion or judgment about your topic. This opinion or judgment is the stand you are taking on this particular topic and it will be the conclusion which your entire essay will try to establish and support. This is your thesis sentence; and this is why the thesis sentence has to come first when you start to construct an essay.

• Build your argument to support this thesis sentence. Return to your assembled material. Go through it again, and this time copy down every argument, every bit of evidence, or every reason you can find in it which will support your conclusion. After you have done this you should be able to tell whether your conclusion is valid or not. If you cannot find enough support to convince you yourself of the validity of your own conclusion, you should discard your thesis sentence and form a new one. Never attempt to argue on behalf of something which you yourself do not believe; if you do, your paper will not be any good.
• Arrange your argument to produce the maximum effect upon the reader. Go through the evidence on separate arguments you have copied down and arrange them in the order of their strength. Usually it is best to start with the weakest and end with the strongest; this arrangement is not always possible, but when it can be done your argument will accumulate more force as it progresses. If this type of arrangement cannot be used, merely arrange the arguments in the order in which they will appear in your paper. Along with each argument, list any contrary arguments. You must state these fully and fairly, but show that on balance your viewpoint is to be favoured. If you ignore them, your essay will be weak, one-sided and unconvincing.
• Write your outline. Begin with the thesis sentence. Always write complete sentences. A brief introduction is needed if any questions or terms have to be defined before you start your argument; otherwise it is optional. Roman numeral “I” will be the first argument or reason in support of your conclusion. Roman numeral “II” will be the second argument – and so on – as you have already arranged these arguments in order. Just as the Roman numeral entries must support your conclusion, so must the subhead entries under each Roman numeral support that particular argument. (usually by clarifying, explaining, or the citing of examples). Copy your thesis sentence word for word as the conclusion at the end of your outline. (this may seem a bit of an insult to your intelligence, but if your outline has gone astray you will find that your thesis sentence will no longer fit in the position it was originally created to occupy. Thus, but doing this you can sometimes save yourself time and wasted effort.)
• Are there any self-contradictory concepts in it?
• Is any of your material irrelevant?
• Does each argument follow logically from everything preceding it?
• Are there any gaps in your reasoning?
• Are there any terms which need to be defined?
• Have you made any dogmatic statements?
• Write the paper itself. About three fourths of your work should be done before you reach this step. If steps 1 to 5 are done well and carefully, the paper should just about write itself.
• References. Use the APA style for references (reproduced following this).
• Proofread your paper and do it at least twice before submitting – more times if possible. Do not rely on a spell checker.
• Never write anything which will be read by others unless you proofread it to the best of your ability. This is one rule that is rigidly observed by all mature scholars and authors who have been writing for years.) Proofread for thought and style, and again check the list in section V. Also, does your paper read smoothly and easily? (Read it out loud, if possible, and you will find out.) Proofread for mechanical errors. Check all questionable spellings. Check all the minimum standard requirements.

*Major portion of the above has been reproduced with permission from the Department of Political Science, University of Western Ontario.

For further assistance:

Pre-Writing Tutorial and Quiz

The Writing Department – refer to P.   59

APA Style Guide

6th edition APA Publication Guid e    ( WARNING : This sheet shows some common reference list entries in APA style. It does not cover every type of entry. The absolute authority for APA style is the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th Edition, available at most libraries or for purchase at most bookstores and the APA Website.)

Paper Sources

Book with one author:[title in italics ]

Doe, J. (2002). Human study of inadequacy . Boston: Little, Brown.

Book with more than one author:[title in italics ]

• List all the authors – by last name & initials. Use & (not and ).
• If more than 6-authors, list the first 6, then et al. (Latin for and others ).

Spock, D. & Kirk, C. (2001). Outer space travel: facts and myths. Washington, DC: Outthere Publications.

Book with an editor:[title in italics ]

Gibbs, J.T. & Huang, L.N. (Eds.). (1991). Children of color: psychological interventions with minority youth. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Book by an organization or group as author:[title in italics ]

When the author & the publisher are the same, list the word Author at the end of the citation.

American Bureau of Statistics. (2005). Census Bureau extrapolations for Tampa, Florida. Washington, DC: Author.

Encyclopedia or dictionary:[title in italics ]

Williams, B. (1990). Babylon. In The new grove dictionary of music and musicians (Vol. 33, pp.56-60). London: Macmillan.

An article in a scholarly journal:[journal title in italics ]

Jones, E. (2004). The mating habits of anorexic minnows. Journal of Creative Fish Watching, 60 , 534-544.

A magazine article:[journal title in italics ]

Density, A. & Manioto, C. (2003, January). How much does a beggar make? Psychology Tomorrow , 66 , 23-25.

A newspaper article with an author:[newspaper name in italics ]

Mullins, M.B. (2003, November 23). The health care crisis. The New York Times , pp. A3, A5.

A newspaper article without an author:[newspaper name in italics ]

Study finds less money for grades. (2005, September 19). Los Angeles Times , p. 14.

Electronic Sources

An Internet article based on a print source:[source name in italics ]

Wertheimer, R. (n.d.). Revisiting Florida’s chads, seeking lessons and jokes.[Electronic Version]. Journal of Voting . Retrieved September 15, 2005, from http://www.votingjournal.com

In the above example, no date was given in the work and (n.d.) is used.

An article in a searchable database:[source name in italics ]

Nosnoozy, D.R. (2002). Sleep is for sissies. Nation’s Business , 76 , 34-38. Retrieved November 25, 2005, from WilsonSelectPlus database.

A Web page:[title of Web page – if given – in italics ]

Do not underline Websites.

Sample Reference List

Doe, J. (2002). Human study of inadequacy. Boston: Little Brown.

McDuck, S. (2002). Psychology Web by Scrooge McDuck. Retrieved November 31, 2005, from http:www.quackpsych.com

Mullins, M.B. (2003, November 23). The health care crisis. The New York Times, pp.A3, A5.

Nosnoozy, D.R. (2002). Sleep is for sissies. Nation’s Business, 76 , 34-38. Retrieved November 25, 2005, from WilsonSelectPlus database.

Spock, D. & Kirk, C. (2001) Outer space travel: facts and myths. Washington, DC: Outthere Publications.

Please keep in mind that every period, every comma, every colon, and all other punctuation marks, italics , and indentations are very important! Be sure to include them.

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Combating Academic Dishonesty, Part 6: ChatGPT, AI, and Academic Integrity

by Thomas Keith | Jan 23, 2023 | Instructional design , Services

Author’s Note: This is the latest installment in an ongoing series of articles about issues pertaining to academic integrity in higher education. For earlier installments, please see: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

ATS instructional designers Mohammad Ahmed and Michael Hernandez contributed content to this article.

Introduction

The state of the tool, issues for academic integrity, technological prevention, non-technological prevention, creative adaptation, further resources.

There are few current issues in education that have provoked more interest – or sounded more alarms – than artificial intelligence (AI) technology. While the issue has simmered for some time, it burst into the forefront of debate following OpenAI’s public release of ChatGPT . When given a prompt – e.g. “What were the causes of World War I?” or “How does the Krebs cycle work?” – ChatGPT (the acronym stands for “Generative Pretrained Transformer”) can generate text that reads, at least on superficial examination, like that written by a human – the basis of the famed Turing Test for machine intelligence.

Once the tool’s capabilities became known, it did not take long for fears to be voiced that students would turn to ChatGPT to write their assignments for them. Eye-grabbing headlines began to appear, not only in sensationalist newspapers like the New York Post ( which dubbed the tool “CheatGPT” ) but in more sober publications like the Atlantic , where an opinion piece bluntly claimed that “the college essay is dead”. Advocates for the worst-case scenario see a future in which human-generated and computer-generated text are indistinguishable, essay assignments are meaningless, and the very skill of academic writing is lost.

One need not accept this doomsday proposition to recognize that ChatGPT raises legitimate concerns for academic integrity. But if we are to address such concerns, we must first answer several key questions: what is ChatGPT, exactly? What are its affordances and limitations? And, assuming that ChatGPT and tools like it are here to stay (as seems overwhelmingly likely), how should we rethink pedagogy to address this new reality?

At this time, ChatGPT is essentially an information aggregator. It trawls vast quantities of human-produced texts and extracts data, which it then synthesizes into a response to a given prompt. As noted above, its responses on many topics are at least coherent enough that they may be superficially indistinguishable from student writing.

As with all AI tools, though, ChatGPT’s capacity to give responses depends upon what, and how much, it is “fed”. Its lack of data on current events, for example, limits its capacity to respond to prompts such as “How is the war in Ukraine progressing today?” There are also guardrails in place to prevent the tool’s being used for nefarious purposes (though cybercriminals are already seeking to circumvent these ).

There are other significant limitations to the tool as well. It cannot cite sources correctly – any request for a bibliography produces false and/or irrelevant citations. Nor is it error-free: users have run across blatant, even comical, mistakes when ChatGPT is asked a question as straightforward as “How do you work?” Like all AI, it is subject to the biases of those who supply its data . And, most fundamentally, it is not true artificial intelligence. There are no indications that ChatGPT understands the questions it is being asked or what it is producing in answer; simply put, it is not sapient. This is worth keeping in mind as the debate rages over whether such tools are capable of supplanting human creativity.

It is, without question, too early in the game to expound upon all the possible difficulties ChatGPT and similar generative AI tools could pose for academic integrity. Already, however, ChatGPT-generated text has proved itself capable of evading plagiarism checkers such as Turnitin. Plagiarism detection software relies on comparing student work to a database of pre-existing work and identifying identical phrases, sentences, etc. to produce an “originality score”. Because the text generated by ChatGPT is (in some sense, anyway) “original,” it renders this technique useless.

ChatGPT also ties into the broader issue of contract cheating – hiring a third party to do work, such as writing an essay or taking an exam, on a student’s behalf. Contract cheating is already a severe problem worldwide, and with the widespread availability of AI writing tools, students can now generate “original” written work for free, without the need to involve a human agent who might betray the student’s confidence.

How Do We Deal with the Problem?

As the New York Times has noted , many faculty and instructors already feel the need to adjust their pedagogy to account for the existence of ChatGPT. Their strategies, actual and proposed, for coping with the tool can be divided into three categories: technological prevention; non-technological prevention; and creative adaptation. We shall consider each of these in turn below.

It will come as no surprise that technological counters to ChatGPT are already in play. A 22-year-old computer science student at Princeton named Edward Tian has introduced GPTZero , which claims to distinguish human- and computer-generated text with a high degree of accuracy. Meanwhile, other plagiarism tools, such as Turnitin, offer their own AI-detection tools and are rapidly working to detect the newest generation of generative AI text. And finally, the makers of ChatGPT are themselves exploring “watermarking” technology to indicate when a document has been generated by the software.

Some experts foresee an “arms race” between AI writing tools and AI detection tools. If this scenario comes to pass, faculty and instructors will be hard-pressed to keep up with the bleeding-edge software needed to counter the newest writing tools. But more fundamentally, we might ask: is technology always the best solution to the problems it creates? Or are there other, perhaps less involved, means of addressing the questions raised by AI?

At the other end of the spectrum, some faculty and instructors have sought to neutralize ChatGPT entirely. This may entail banning ChatGPT specifically; banning all computers in the classroom; supervising student essay-writing, whether in class or via monitoring software such as Proctorio; or even requiring writing assignments to be handwritten.

The concern that underlies such measures is understandable, and they can be effective in the short-term, but they come at a cost: aside from the anxiety that can be provoked by being under surveillance, accessibility issues that may be raised by requiring handwritten work, and the legal/ethical issues raised by video proctoring, students miss the opportunity to learn about the tool and its implications. As we confront the likelihood of a future with ubiquitous AI technology, those students who have never experienced tools like ChatGPT and who know nothing about their uses may well find themselves at a professional disadvantage.

At this point in time, it seems most productive to take a third path – one that balances the need to safeguard academic integrity with the reality that ChatGPT and its like are here to stay. Here are some suggestions for methods to integrate AI tools like ChatGPT into your pedagogy in a productive, rather than destructive, fashion.

• Clarify expectations at the outset. As early in your course as possible – ideally within the syllabus itself – you should specify whether, and under what circumstances, the use of AI tools is permissible. It may help to think of ChatGPT as similar to peer assistance, group work, or outside tutoring: in all these cases, your students should understand where the boundaries lie, when help is permissible, and when they must rely on their own resources. You might also discuss with your students how they feel about AI and its ability (or lack thereof) to convey their ideas. Emergent research suggests that at least some students feel dissatisfied with the results when they entrust expression of their ideas to AI.
• Craft writing prompts that require creative thought. A tool like ChatGPT can easily respond to a simple prompt such as “What are the causes of inflation?”, but it is likely to have trouble with a prompt such as “Compare and contrast inflation in the present-day American economy with that in the late 1970s”. The more in-depth and thought out the prompt, the more it will demand critical reasoning – not simply regurgitation – to answer.
• Run your prompts through ChatGPT. Related to the point above, actually using ChatGPT on a draft of your writing prompt can be an illuminating exercise. Successive iterations may help you to clarify your thinking and add nuances to your prompt that were not present in the initial draft.
• Scaffold your writing assignments. This is a time-honored technique for combating plagiarism of any kind in academic writing. It will be much harder for a student to submit a final draft generated by AI and get away with it if you have observed that student’s thinking and writing process throughout the course.
• Promote library resources. As mentioned previously, ChatGPT is not presently able to generate an accurate bibliography, nor does it understand the concept of citation. This shortcoming can be a good jumping-off point for you to explain to your students how to cite properly, why citation is important, and how they can use available resources to do their own research.
• Model productive use of AI tools. For all its hazards, ChatGPT also offers promising possibilities. A “dialogue” between the user and the tool can help the user to probe deeper into the subject matter, become familiar with mainstream scholarship on the topic, and push beyond “easy answers” toward original work. To promote such dialogue, you might, for example, assign your students to come up with their own prompts, post them to ChatGPT, and then comment on the answers, finding the strengths and weaknesses of the “argument” that the tool generates.

In a field evolving by the day, no article, this one included, can hope to offer definite answers. What we have presented here are points we hope will contextualize the debate and provide a framework for further discussion. In the end, what AI tools will mean for higher education – and for society as a whole – remains to be seen.

To learn more about AI in the classroom, we recommend the excellent page on AI Guidance from Yale’s Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning. Turnitin also offers a concise but helpful Guide for approaching AI-generated text in your classroom .

If you have further questions, Academic Technology Solutions is here to help. You can schedule a consultation with us or drop by our office hours (virtual and in-person, no appointment needed). We also offer a range of workshops on topics in teaching with technology.

(Cover Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash )

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Academic Honesty

Graduate students.

The University of Rochester's  Academic Honesty Policy covers all aspects of academic honesty at the University, for both graduate and undergraduate students. If you have questions about academic honesty at Rochester, or would like more information, see the  policy ,  contact us , or talk to your advisor and instructors.

Academic Dishonesty

You can be found responsible for violating the policy even if you did not know or understand that you were committing academic dishonesty. Not every possible violation is listed in the policy, so always ask if you think something you are considering doing might be academically dishonest.

Graduate student violations in coursework or any other area, with the exception of misconduct in research, are handled through the Board on Academic Honesty procedures described below. If you are teaching a course or serving as a teaching assistant, please see the  Instructor Resources  for handling academic dishonesty in that role.

Academic dishonesty can involve a wide range of offenses. Our policy lists several types of offenses, including:

• Copying papers, online answer keys, or answers on exams, or allowing others to copy your work
• Any other act that represents someone else's work as your own
• Hindering the use of, or access to library materials, such as the removal of books from the libraries without formally checking out the items, or the intentional hiding of materials, or the refusal to return reserve readings to the library, etc.
• Obtaining an exam prior to its administration, or using unauthorized aid during an examination
• Altering answers on graded exams and submitting them for re-grading
• Copying data from other students' labs or research projects or allowing others to copy your data
• Using labs, papers, or assignments from previous semesters or from other students and submitting them for credit
• Turning in identical work on collaborative assignments
• Giving or receiving inappropriate help or feedback on written assignments
• Unauthorized recording, distribution or publication of lectures or other course‐related materials
• Using another student's username or password for online logins, or permitting such use
• Giving false information or false alibis to the Board on Academic Honesty
• Forging signatures or falsifying information on academic or medical forms

Academic dishonesty is not limited to those offenses listed above. If you're not sure whether what you're doing constitutes academic dishonesty, ask your instructor or the  Academic Honesty Liaison . Ask via email if possible, and save a copy of the response.

Dishonesty in Research

Graduate students who engage in academic dishonesty in the pursuit of sponsored research, normally termed “misconduct in research,” will not be subject to the College Academic Honesty Policy presided over by the board. Such violations are in conflict with Federal statutes that bind funding agencies, and must be dealt with by departmental procedures that have been approved by the College dean of graduate studies. Disciplinary actions that may accompany such procedures range from expulsion to revocation of advanced degrees.

Avoiding Academic Dishonesty

You will have many opportunities to practice academic honesty, such as during examinations, writing reports and papers, and in collaborations and group projects. Here are some tips and resources to help.

Even if you're not cheating on an exam, you might be accused of cheating if you act suspiciously. Avoid conflict and protect yourself by following these tips:

• All students copy and sign this  Honor Pledge  on all exams: “I affirm that I will not give or receive any unauthorized help on this exam, and that all work will be my own.”
• Start studying early. Reviewing material during the semester will help you learn.
• Make sure the instructor has approved using old exams to prepare for the test  before  you look at them.
• Don't bring a backpack or other unnecessary bags to the exam, or set them far away from you.
• Make sure all of your bags are zipped shut and that no loose papers can be seen or slide out from under your desk.
• Set all of your materials on your desk before the exam starts. Don't reach down for pencils, calculators, etc.
• Even if the instructor doesn't require it, sit far away from other students, or sit at the front of the classroom near the instructor.
• If possible, do not bring your cellphone into the exam room. If you must have it with you, turn it off and keep it in a closed backpack or other bag. You should not have it on your person in a pocket, in your hand, on your desk or otherwise visible to you.

Writing Papers

You are responsible to understand and avoid plagiarism. When in doubt, cite your source. Write academically honest papers using these tips:

• Learn about citation from the library's  Writing & Citing Guide .
• Always follow the citation method required for your discipline (MLA, APA, etc.) and ask if you aren't sure which to use.
• Resources promoting research skills and writing skills are found at the  library  and  writing websites.

Group Projects

When you collaborate, every member is responsible for the final product. Create group projects safely with these tips:

• Clearly define who will work on what, and ask the instructor if you are not sure about how work is being divided.
• Start early and set deadlines before the due date so you have a chance to work together and can check others' work.
• If you do not understand the guidelines for academically honest group projects, ask your instructor, and try to get the answer in writing.

Accusations of Academic Dishonesty

The academic honesty process at University of Rochester sets high standards for academic honesty in all academic work. Violations by graduate students raise immediate concerns about the student’s ability to conduct original scholarship as required for graduate degrees. They also undermine the trust that a mentor, dissertation committee, or an academic department must have for a graduate student in the pursuit of new knowledge. There are serious penalties for academic dishonesty, including possible expulsion from the University. If you are suspected of academic dishonesty, you must remain in the course and cannot declare the S/F option unless you are found innocent. So continue to fulfill all class obligations: attend all classes, complete all assignments and take all tests. A charge of academic dishonesty is not a reason to give up on a class, no matter how much the charge of dishonesty makes you feel uncomfortable.

The person reporting you (often a course instructor) cannot impose a penalty without going through the procedures outlined in the policy. If you feel your instructor is attempting to punish you for suspected dishonesty without going through approved academic honesty procedures or if they ask you to withdraw from the course, please  contact the chair of the board .

Instructor Resolution with Penalty

If the violation is minor, an instructor may choose an  Instructor Resolution Process  in consultation with the AS&E dean of graduate studies. If the instructor requests a meeting with you to discuss the suspected violation, attend the meeting.

Be sure you understand the precise nature of the charges against you and the events or documentation that support those charges. Ask questions. If you are innocent, try to provide as much evidence of your innocence as possible to the instructor.

Read the  College Academic Honesty Policy  very carefully to familiarize yourself with rules and procedures. You can also consult with the  Academic Honesty Liaison , who can answer your questions about policies and procedures and give you advice.

If the instructor remains convinced of your academic dishonesty, you may be asked to sign an agreement admitting to your responsibility in exchange for an agreed-upon penalty. If you sign the Instructor Resolution with Penalty form, you will receive the penalty.

You are under no obligation to sign the Instructor Resolution with Penalty form. If you choose not to do so, your case will be turned over for review by the Board on Academic Honesty. (Alleged violations of the policy are dealt with by the board, not by the dean of Graduate Students Office.) At this point the procedure is the same as that followed when a board resolution case is submitted to the board.

Board Resolution

An instructor may choose a  Board Resolution , sometimes without notifying you. This process requires a hearing before the board.

You will receive notification from the board of the allegation that has been made and your hearing date.

You should review your case file by making an appointment with the secretary to the board. You will not be permitted to photocopy or otherwise make an image of the case file, but you may take notes on the contents of the file.

If you like, you may bring one community member (University of Rochester instructor, administrator, student or staff member) to the hearing for moral support. That person may speak to you during the hearing, but may not speak to the board. This community member must not be acting as an attorney, or an individual involved in the case.

At the  hearing , be sure to refute any information presented in the file or during the hearing that you believe to be in error.

After a Board Hearing

If a student is exonerated, an exoneration letter will be written by the presiding officer and sent to the AS&E dean of graduate studies, who will review the decision. If the dean does not recommend the board reconsider the finding, they will send the decision letter to the student and reporting person. The board file for the case will be destroyed within thirty days of the date of the exoneration letter.

If a Hearing Board finds a student responsible for academic dishonesty, the board’s finding and the sanction decided upon must be approved by the AS&E dean of graduate studies. The AS&E dean of graduate studies will forward the finding to the University dean of graduate studies, as per the University “Judicial Process for Academic Misconduct by Graduate Students.”

The University dean of graduate studies will issue the final decision letter to the student and reporting person. Students may appeal the board’s decision to the University provost. Appeals must be initiated by means of a letter written to the provost within one week of the date of the decision letter.

First-time minor offenses include some reduction in the course grade equal to or greater than that which is stipulated for undergraduates. First-time offenses that are considered moderate or major result in the recommendation of the XE grade and may result in expulsion from the graduate program.

Second offenses at any level of severity must go to a hearing as above, and will normally result in expulsion from the graduate program following consultation with the department’s director of graduate studies and the AS&E dean of graduate studies. Additional sanctions may apply at any level, such as ineligibility for stipends or teaching awards.

Board files on all individual cases remain in the possession of the secretary to the board for a period of seven years, after which they are destroyed. The reporting person (usually an instructor) is required to keep the information confidential. Students applying for awards and fellowships or employment may be asked to sign a waiver revealing whether they have been found responsible of academic dishonesty as part of the application process. No information about a student's academic honesty record will be shared without a signed waiver, unless required by law.

• Office of the Provost

Academic Honesty Policy

Contact Information

For questions, please contact Heidi Kennedy, Assistant Dean, Undergraduate Academic Affairs, at 713-743-9187 or by email at  [email protected].

Instructor Role in the Process

Waiver of departmental hearing, departmental hearing process, college hearing process.

High ethical standards are critical to the integrity of any institution, and bear directly on the ultimate value of conferred degrees. All UH community members are expected to contribute to an atmosphere of the highest possible ethical standards.

Maintaining such an atmosphere requires that any instances of academic dishonesty be recognized and addressed. The UH Academic Honesty Policy is designed to handle those instances with fairness to all parties involved: the students, the instructors, and the University itself.

All students and faculty of the University of Houston are responsible for being familiar with this policy.

The official University of Houston Academic Honesty Policy appears in the Undergraduate and Graduate Catalogs.

• Undergraduate Catalog
• Graduate Catalog

Download a printable version of the Instructor Role in the Academic Honesty Process

Download a printable version of the Waiver of Departmental Hearing Process

Download a printable version of the Departmental Hearing Process

Download a printable version of the College Hearing Process

WAIVER CHECK

Within five class days of discovering or receiving a report of an alleged academic honesty violation, the instructor notifies the Department Hearing Officer in writing of the case. The Department Hearing Officer consults with the Provost Office representative to verify if students are eligible for waiver of department hearing as determined by case history (no prior academic honesty waiver/violation).

  Click here to submit a request for a waiver check  to verify student eligibility to waive department hearing.

You may need to sign-in under your UH Cougarnet access. You will be requested to provide information including student name, student ID # , and related course information. For circumstances or questions that exceed the waiver check form, contact Heidi Kennedy,  [email protected]  , 713-743-9187.

STUDENT REQUEST to REMOVE NAME from Academic Honesty Case List If you are a student who has graduated and wish to request that your name be removed from the academic honesty case list,  submit a request HERE  .

Eligible students have graduated from UH and their academic honesty case was resolved by signing a waiver of department hearing. If a student's academic honesty case resulted in a violation decided by department or college hearing, the record is permanent and the name may not be removed from the academic honesty case list.

Frequently Asked Questions on the Academic Honesty Policy

See the Academic Honesty Policy FAQs for  students  and for  faculty  in this website.

Please also note that, in addition to the fundamental UH Academic Honesty Policy, the professional schools such as the Law Center, the College of Optometry, the College of Pharmacy, and The Graduate College of Social Work may each have their own approved academic honesty policies. For further information, please contact the individual college.

Additional Resources for Academic Integrity

• Bauer College of Business Academic Integrity
• Cullen College of Engineering
• Graduate College Social Work
• UH Turnitin
• Respondus lockdown browser
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Citing Sources
• Incorporating Sources

• Share full article

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Guest Essay

Elite College Admissions Have Turned Students Into Brands

By Sarah Bernstein

Ms. Bernstein is a playwright, a writing coach and an essayist in Brooklyn.

“I just can’t think of anything,” my student said.

After 10 years of teaching college essay writing, I was familiar with this reply. For some reason, when you’re asked to recount an important experience from your life, it is common to forget everything that has ever happened to you. It’s a long-form version of the anxiety that takes hold at a corporate retreat when you’re invited to say “one interesting thing about yourself,” and you suddenly believe that you are the most boring person in the entire world. Once during a version of this icebreaker, a man volunteered that he had only one kidney, and I remember feeling incredibly jealous of him.

I tried to jog this student’s memory. What about his love of music? Or his experience learning English? Or that time on a summer camping trip when he and his friends had nearly drowned? “I don’t know,” he said with a sigh. “That all seems kind of cliché.”

Applying to college has always been about standing out. When I teach college essay workshops and coach applicants one on one, I see my role as helping students to capture their voice and their way of processing the world, things that are, by definition, unique to each individual. Still, many of my students (and their parents) worry that as getting into college becomes increasingly competitive, this won’t be enough to set them apart.

Their anxiety is understandable. On Thursday, in a tradition known as “Ivy Day,” all eight Ivy League schools released their regular admission decisions. Top colleges often issue statements about how impressive (and competitive) their applicant pools were this cycle. The intention is to flatter accepted students and assuage rejected ones, but for those who have not yet applied to college, these statements reinforce the fear that there is an ever-expanding cohort of applicants with straight A’s and perfect SATs and harrowing camping trip stories all competing with one another for a vanishingly small number of spots.

This scarcity has led to a boom in the college consulting industry, now estimated to be a $2.9 billion business. In recent years, many of these advisers and companies have begun to promote the idea of personal branding — a way for teenagers to distinguish themselves by becoming as clear and memorable as a good tagline.

While this approach often leads to a strong application, students who brand themselves too early or too definitively risk missing out on the kind of exploration that will prepare them for adult life.

Like a corporate brand, the personal brand is meant to distill everything you stand for (honesty, integrity, high quality, low prices) into a cohesive identity that can be grasped at a glance. On its website, a college prep and advising company called Dallas Admissions explains the benefits of branding this way: “Each person is complex, yet admissions officers only have a small amount of time to spend learning about each prospective student. The smart student boils down key aspects of himself or herself into their personal ‘brand’ and sells that to the college admissions officer.”

Identifying the key aspects of yourself may seem like a lifelong project, but unfortunately, college applicants don’t have that kind of time. Online, there are dozens of lesson plans and seminars promising to walk students through the process of branding themselves in five to 10 easy steps. The majority begin with questions I would have found panic-inducing as a teenager, such as, “What is the story you want people to tell about you when you’re not in the room?”

Where I hoped others would describe me as “normal” or, in my wildest dreams, “cool,” today’s teenagers are expected to leave this exercise with labels like, Committed Athlete and Compassionate Leader or Environmentally Conscious Musician. Once students have a draft of their ideal self, they’re offered instructions for manifesting it (or at least, the appearance of it) in person and online. These range from common-sense tips (not posting illegal activity on social media) to more drastic recommendations (getting different friends).

It’s not just that these courses cut corners on self-discovery; it’s that they get the process backward. A personal brand is effective only if you can support it with action, so instead of finding their passion and values through experience, students are encouraged to select a passion as early as possible and then rack up the experience to substantiate it. Many college consultants suggest beginning to align your activities with your college ambitions by ninth grade, while the National Institute of Certified College Planners recommends students “talk with parents, guardians, and/or an academic adviser to create a clear plan for your education and career-related goals” in junior high.

The idea of a group of middle schoolers soberly mapping out their careers is both comical and depressing, but when I read student essays today, I can see that this advice is getting through. Over the past few years, I have been struck by how many high school seniors already have defined career goals as well as a C.V. of relevant extracurriculars to go with them. This widens the gap between wealthy students and those who lack the resources to secure a fancy research gig or start their own small business. (A shocking number of college applicants claim to have started a small business.) It also puts pressure on all students to define themselves at a moment when they are anxious to fit in and yet changing all the time.

In the world of branding, a word that appears again and again is “consistency.” If you are Charmin, that makes sense. People opening a roll of toilet paper do not want to be surprised. If you are a teenage human being, however, that is an unreasonable expectation. Changing one’s interests, opinions and presentation is a natural part of adolescence and an instructive one. I find that my students with scattershot résumés are often the most confident. They’re not afraid to push back against suggestions that ring false and will insist on revising their essay until it actually “feels like me.” On the other hand, many of my most accomplished students are so quick to accept feedback that I am wary of offering it, lest I become one more adult trying to shape them into an admission-worthy ideal.

I understand that for parents, prioritizing exploration can feel like a risky bet. Self-insight is hard to quantify and to communicate in a college application. When it comes to building a life, however, this kind of knowledge has more value than any accolade, and it cannot be generated through a brainstorming exercise in a six-step personal branding course online. To equip kids for the world, we need to provide them not just with opportunities for achievement, but with opportunities to fail, to learn, to wander and to change their minds.

In some ways, the college essay is a microcosm of modern adolescence. Depending on how you look at it, it’s either a forum for self-discovery or a high-stakes test you need to ace. I try to assure my students that it is the former. I tell them that it’s a chance to take stock of everything you’ve experienced and learned over the past 18 years and everything you have to offer as a result.

That can be a profound process. But to embark on it, students have to believe that colleges really want to see the person behind the brand. And they have to have the chance to know who that person is.

Sarah Bernstein is a playwright, a writing coach and an essayist.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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CS 224C Logistics

Stanford / spring 2024.

• Project (55%): Divided into proposal (10%), midway report (15%), final submission (25%), project pitch (2.5%), and poster presentation (2.5%).
• Presentation (10%): Engage with your subject matter and peers through presentations.
• Homework (20%): Four assignments, each worth 5%, designed to reinforce core material.
• Participation (3%): Involvement in discussions, presentations, and project teamwork.
• Reading Responses (12%): 12 responses, each contributing 1%, to foster engagement and critical thinking.

This is the system we will use at the end of the quarter to map numerical final grades to letter grades. No curve is applied, and there are no other factors shaping the mapping from weighted averages ( details here ) to letter grades.

Reading Responses

A short (2-paragraph) written response to each reading to be posted the day before class.

The response should not focus on summarizing the papers, but instead raise questions that would be appropriate for discussion, or propose ideas to think about. The goal is to get you to think critically about the research that a paper presents and why that research is important.

• why the work is/isn't novel/important in terms of data/method/topic
• critique certain features of the reading
• identify potentially important issues not covered in the reading
• how the paper has changed your opinion or outlook on a topic
• suggest new research questions inspired by the reading, or think about new ways to improve the work
• Check-minus (85%) : Surface-level engagement with the readings, or a repeat of a style of critique that the staff told the class to avoid. Examples of surface-level engagement include: comments about whether the student likes or would use the technology, a summary of the paper rather than a reflections on the ideas, or critiques that engage only obliquely with the paper or indicate that the author didn't fully read it.
• Check (100%) : Effective engagement with the readings. Example responses involving check grades often indicate that they understand the main ideas of the papers, and the reflections are reasonably nontrivial observations worth discussing.
• Check-plus (105%) : Excellent engagement with the readings. Check-plus grades are reserved for rare instances where a reading response really hits on an interesting, unique, and insightful point of view worth sharing.

Class Participation

• Class participation grades are based on whether you productively contribute to the classroom discussions in lecture. This grade also captures your contributions in the presentation and leading discussion section. Finally, participation grades will also take into account how actively you contribute to the success of your project alongside your teammates.
• Please check out the details of the course project here .
• Please discuss your project idea with instructor/TA early on in the course.
• Literature Review
• Experiment Protocol
• Final Paper
• Literature Review: Due Monday, Jan 30, 5:00PM Thursday, Jan 26, 5:00pm
• Experiment Protocol: Due Thursday, Feb 16, 5:00pm
• Final Paper: Due Tuesday, March 21, 5:00pm

Academic Honesty

Please familiarize yourself with Stanford's honor code . We will adhere to it and follow through on its penalty guidelines.

• It is expected that you accurately represent your own work and the work of others in this class. Ideas should be your own. Any use of tools (e.g., ChatGPT) should be limited to clarity and credited appropriately in your submission.
• Each student will have a total of 6 free late (calendar) days applicable to any assignment (including the lit review and project milestone) except the final project paper . Final project papers cannot be turned in late under any circumstances.
• Free late days can be used at any time, no questions asked. Each 24 hours or part thereof that a homework is late uses up one full late day. Once these late days are exhausted, any homework or quiz turned in late will be penalized 10% per late day.
• If a group's assignment is late n days, then each group member is charged n late days.
• Late days are never transferrable between students, even students in the same group.
• Late days do not apply to the final submission of the course project/
• Reading responses do not have late days (since they are a prerequisite for coming to class, so responses posted after 5pm the day before class will count as not turned in.)

Policy on Submitting Related Final Projects to Multiple Classes

On the one hand, we want to encourage you to pursue unified interdisciplinary projects that weave together themes from multiple classes. On the other hand, we need to ensure that final projects for this course are original and involve a substantial new effort.

To try to meet both these demands, we are adopting the following policy on joint submission: if your final project for this course is related to your final project for another course, you are required to submit both projects to us by our final project due date. If we decide that the projects are too similar, your project will receive a failing grade. To avoid this extreme outcome, we strongly encourage you to stay in close communication with us if your project is related to another you are submitting for credit, so that there are no unhappy surprises at the end of the term. Since there is no single objective standard for what counts as "different enough", it is better to play it safe by talking with us.

Fundamentally, we are saying that combining projects is not a shortcut. In a sense, we are in the same position as professional conferences and journals, which also need to watch out for multiple submissions. You might have a look at the ACL/NAACL policy , which strives to ensure that any two papers submitted to those conferences make substantially different contributions – our goal here as well.

It is very important to us that all assignments are properly graded. The teaching staff works extremely hard to grade fairly and to turn around assignments quickly. We know what you work hard, and we respect that. Occasionally, mistakes happen, and it's important to us to correct them. If you believe there is an error in your assignment grading, please submit an explanation in writing to the staff within seven days of receiving the grade. We will regrade the entire assignment to ensure quality.

• No regrade requests will be accepted orally, and no regrade requests will be accepted more than seven days after receipt of the assignment. Regrade requests must be respectful; we will not consider any regrade requests containing disrespectful language.

Names and Pronouns

• Use the names and pronouns (e.g., they/them, she/her, he/him, just a name, or something else) indicated by your classmates for themselves. If you don’t want to share a set of pronouns for yourself, that is perfectly acceptable, too. If your name or pronouns change during the course, we invite you to share this with us and/or other students, so we may talk with you and refer to your ideas in discussion as you would wish.