Academic Integrity Essay

Manjula Tanguturi

Academic Integrity

I am going to write about a topic which some people do not know in their lifetime and that topic is known as Academic Dishonesty. I am also going to write about why it is important for members of the university to understand academic dishonesty. In my paper, I am going to talk about unauthorized collaboration and how to avoid it. My paper will also include what is plagiarism and consequences and how a student can avoid plagiarism. It is going to include how a student should properly cite direct words of others and also how a student should paraphrase words and ideas of others. This paper also reflects my opinion about Academic Dishonesty.

Academic dishonesty is a broad subject. It has plagiarism, cheating on exams, unauthorized collaboration and falsifying records but these are few of them which are included in Academic Dishonesty but

there are many more. Cheating on exams can happen in many ways like when a student brings cheat notes or looking at another person’s paper. Falsifying records is defined as changing the official records that include transcripts, college admission applications and grades. For example, if I am looking at another student’s paper during the exam, then that would be considered academic dishonesty (Rhoten, 2015).
It is very important for members of the University to understand academic dishonesty because they cannot be dishonest in any place. A student needs to be honest in every aspect of their life. Academic dishonesty would make him aware that he cannot cheat in any place. I believe that the rules and regulations of the academic dishonesty would let the student continue to be honest even after completion of his studies (Rhoten, 2015).
Unauthorized collaboration can be explained as discussing the same assignment with a group of students or family members without the permission of the teacher. You can avoid unauthorized collaboration by putting your own effort on an assignment. A student can only get help from the writing center. (Rhoten, 2015).
Plagiarism can be described as using someone’s work on any assignment without giving credit to the author of that work. Another example would be when a student copies the author’s work and does not give a citation. Plagiarism can be avoided by a student when they write someone else’s work in their own words and they give credit to the author. For example, I avoid plagiarism when I am writing a research paper. I read the article at least a couple of times and try to summarize the article in my own words and I also give credit to the author. Giving credit to the author is the most important thing to avoid plagiarism (Rhoten, 2015).
A proper way for a student to cite direct words is to put quotes around it and give a citation at the end of a sentence.

For example, “Over the centuries, with the emergence of germ theory, improved hygiene and inductive research methods, commercial interest in material medicas declined” (Voeks, 2004, 871) (Rhoten, 2015).

A proper way for a student to paraphrase words and ideas of others is to write it in their own words and give a citation at the end of a sentence. For example, both the cultivating groups and hunter-gatherer groups had less impact on the tropical vegetation but it is not significant (Voeks, 2004, 875) (Rhoten, 2015).

I am writing this essay because I got too much help from my family for an assignment for a geography class. I took too much help from my family because of my surgery on my left cheek to remove my abscess and did not go to the writing center. I was not aware that taking too much help from my family would come under plagiarism. I think too much help from family members would also be considered unauthorized collaboration. Now I know about unauthorized

collaboration.
In the end, I learned that Academic dishonesty can include plagiarism, unauthorized collaboration and falsifying records. I also learned that academic dishonesty will not only be used in universities but it will also be helpful in every aspect of my life. I have learned about unauthorized collaboration and plagiarism and the steps I need to take to avoid them. I was not aware of plagiarism while I was studying in India. There is no plagiarism and unauthorized collaboration in India.