Academic Dishonesty

Some Comments

To help set some guidelines to the madness, the information below is offered as a general guide.  Remember, this is not an end all, be all in cheating regulations.

In addition to assisting students with learning material, teachers are responsible for assessing their progress. In order to do this, students may be given a number of different types of assignments: homework, quizzes, tests, in-class activities, laboratory experiments to conduct, research papers, individual and group projects, presentations, etc.

It is understood that for some of these assignments, students may collaborate with one another.  A student team may design and present a project together. Students might consult each other to find out how to solve a homework problem. In these cases, collaboration is accepted and even encouraged.  

However, in other cases, the teacher desires an individual assessment of the student, ie. an answer to the question: "How much progress has the student made in mastering the material?" These assessments, usually in the form of quizzes and tests, are to be performed without assistance from any other sources or students.

There are many ways that a student may cheat, but in my opinion they all fall into one of three categories: 

• Giving or receiving information on quizzes or examinations

Looking at someone else's test paper to copy the answer, or work, to a problem, discussing a test problem or sharing its solution with another student, copying test problems or answers and sharing them with another student, stealing a test, stealing the answers to a test are some examples that fall into the first category.

• Using any unauthorized aids on quizzes or examinations

Using notes during a test that have not been expressly allowed by the teacher are prohibited.  This includes all notes, whether handwritten, computer generated, or programmed into your calculator.

• Submitting someone else's work for your own

Working together on homework is a common and acceptable study tactic.  However, one student doing the work and another writing the answers is not.  Also, copying homework out of the back of the textbook is NOT acceptable under any circumstances.

The penalties for cheating vary, depending on the institution, the department, the teacher, and the nature of the infraction. 

According to the Los Angeles Times (8/30), back in Imperial China, the penalty for plagiarism was death.  (un)Fortunately, we as a society have moved beyond that severe of a punishment.  

I am checking with the administration to see if there are school wide standards for punishment of academic dishonesty.

Any of these consequences are IN ADDITION TO any given by the instructor of the course.

An extended discussion of the ethics of cheating is beyond the scope of this note. What IS important to understand is that any form of academic dishonesty, at any level, is taken very seriously by ALL academic institutions. Cheating places your grade at risk and jeopardizes your academic career. And it's just plain WRONG.

Don't do it.