Answer these 8 questions to test your knowledge of academic integrity essentials. You may exit the quiz at any time by clicking RETURN TO ACADEMIC INTEGRITY GATEWAY.
For more information, see links to "Academic Integrity Essentials" on the main Academic Integrity Gateway page.
In writing a paper on the image of Asian-Americans in advertising, you use information that you found in a book and three journal articles. Since you do not quote any passages verbatim but instead summarize the information in your own words, proper documentation requires you simply to list your sources in the bibliography at the end of your paper.
In writing a paper, you use material that you found on websites. You are careful to acknowledge your source both in the text of your paper as well as in your bibliography, even though formatting citations to Web resources can be a headache.
Your roommate tells you that you are being overly conscientious, since all information on the Web is considered to be in the public domain anyway. Surfers can cut and paste passages into their work, modify them or not, and a simple acknowledgment in the bibliography is sufficient.
Is your roommate's advice correct?
For your marketing class, you and three other students must invent a new product and then launch an imaginary company, complete with a commercial website. Having found a number of attractive graphics by using the Google image search, you proceed to place them on your “company’s” site, to be hosted on the Villanova University server, and therefore, freely visible to anyone. In doing this, your group is not violating any copyright laws, since images on the Web may be freely used by anyone.
In writing a paper for your ETH2010 class on some of the ethical considerations of cloning, you incorporate parts of a paper that you wrote a previous semester for your ACS1001 class. Even though you are reusing your own work, you check with your professor to make sure it is OK and to see how it should be documented. Are you more careful than you have to be?
Read the following passage:
Blogs can be a venue for student contemplative thought and critical writing. Since blogs come equipped with tools so that any visitor can comment on any post, this means a student's tentative thoughts can be heard, encouraged, engaged, challenged, and commented by those around her. Students' ideas can inform the direction of the class week by week, even if they don't have the confidence to open up their mouths and explore a new idea in the classroom. This kind of social software can be used not only to encourage thoughtful and regular writing, but also to help turn a classroom into a community, to help build relationships between students as well as students and their instructors.
You paraphrase the above passage as follows:
Rochelle Mazar, a blog practitioner, advocates the use of blogs as a way of getting timid students to make their tentative thoughts heard, thus encouraging thoughtful and regular writing. Because this new technology allows any visitor to comment on any post, it can encourage communities and build relationships between students as well as students and their instructors.
Is your paraphrase acceptable?
Maria took an NROTC test for which she was not prepared. She copied answers from Steve who was sitting just ahead of her. Steve was not very well prepared for the exam and made a number of mistakes. The teacher noticed that two students made exactly the same mistake on the same question, coming up with the same wrong answer to two decimal points, and he remembered that Maria had been sitting behind Steve. Is Maria's action a violation of the Academic Integrity Code?
Sonya is taking a course in Marketing from Professor Mikey. When Professor Mikey gives a test, she always lets the students keep the sheet with the test questions, and has them write answers in an exam blue book. Sonya notices that several students in the class seem to have copies of Professor Mikey's exams from previous semesters. They get these exams from their friends who have had the class before. The exams aren't the same (although sometimes she does reuse a question or two) but they are a great study aid, and some of the students who have the old exams seem to do better. Is it a violation of the Academic Integrity Code for these students to use these examinations as a way to study?
Dr. Gates gives a take-home mid-term in her course on public finance. She tells students to do the mid-term on their own. Steve and Mark work together on their take-home exams. Dr. Gates notices similarities that can only be explained by collaboration, and calls them in for a conference. Steve and Mark admit that they collaborated to review ideas but they completed writing their mid-terms alone as instructed. They point out that the business world encourages team work, and they say that some other people in the class also worked together. Is their behavior a violation of the code?