Understanding Academic Integrity: Importance and Practices for Success (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Integrity What is it? It means acting with honesty and doing the right thing even when nobody is watching. One example of acting with integrity is finding money on the floor of a supermarket and instead of keeping it, giving it to the supermarket attendant in case the person who lost it comes back to look for it. So what is academic integrity? It means acting with honesty, truth, fairness and respect in your academic work, doing your own work and always referencing the work of others. The opposite of academic integrity is academic dishonesty and it means participating in dishonest academic actions and may include cheating, plagiarism or other forms of academic dishonesty. Let's look at some examples of academic dishonesty. Copying answers on a test, quiz or other assignment from somebody else. Doing somebody else's work for them. Giving somebody the test or quiz answers or getting the answers from somebody in advance. Or paying somebody to do your work for you. So what is plagiarism? It is copying the work of others and presenting it as your own original work. This is one example of plagiarism. Buying papers online. Copying and pasting from the internet and rearranging words and sentences. Reusing information without referencing it. Paying others to do your work or reusing somebody else's work are all considered plagiarism. Remember, information you use from any source must always be referenced in your work, even if it's a friend's idea, a sentence from the internet or a verse from your favorite song. In some cultures, copying another author's words is widely accepted and even considered a compliment to the author. But in the US, you show respect for other people's work by always referencing the author of the work. Not doing so is considered cheating, stealing and is a very serious offense. If you are caught, you can fail the assignment, the course or even get suspended or expelled from the university. Let's talk about group work because it's kind of tricky. With group work, each person must submit their own original work, even if the answer is the same. With group work, you do want to help each other find the answer or information together, but you don't want to copy from each other or submit the same work. So what should you do? Understand the rules on cheating, plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty. Learn how to reference the work of others properly. And understand the rules in each class. Your instructors may have different rules, but those rules will be written in the course syllabus. And if you ever have doubts, remember you can always ask. So you have choices. Use campus resources like the Writing Center, manage your time wisely, talk to your instructors and most importantly, learn and respect the rules. Acting honestly in your academic work will prepare you for success in your personal and professional future. And when you receive your diploma, you will be confident that the skills and knowledge that you earned really belong to you. And wherever life takes you, the people you interact with will respect the honesty that you practiced in your academic life.