Your responses to your classmates must be substantive. Share ideas, explore differences, and think critically about your classmates’ posts. Bring in information from your textbook, classroom resources or other credible sources that you find to contribute to the discussion. You are invited to share relevant audio, video, or images in your responses. You must cite and reference any sources you use, even in your responses to your classmates. It must be at least 100 words.
PEER RESPONSE:
Academic integrity is defined as the moral code or ethical policy of academia; acting with the values of honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility in learning, teaching, and research. The two key elements of academic integrity are academic voice and careful attribution. It is important to use your own voice, whether written or spoken when presenting arguments, ideas, facts, and conclusions that are supported by research. “Academic honesty means that if you are writing the words of someone else, or if you are discussing a unique idea you learned from research, you must cite your source.” (von Winckelmann, 2015). Careful attribution is important because it gives stories credibility and perspective. It tells others how we know what we know.
My two key elements of academic dishonesty are falsifying data and plagiarism. Falsifying data, or data falsification, is intentionally manipulating or misrepresenting research or scholarly materials, equipment, or processes by changing or omitting data or results. Plagiarism is taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as your own. Students, or professionals, have a responsibility to behave ethically, to understand, and adhere to “Specific Policies on Academic Integrity.” (Students Rights and Responsibilities, 2018). “Whether paraphrasing, quoting an author directly, or describing an idea that influenced your work, you must credit the source.” (American Psychological Association, 2010).
The school takes plagiarism seriously and imposes harsh penalties on offenders, up to failure and expulsion from the university. Look at it like this, if you choose to cheat, you miss out on a valuable learning experience. It is always better to actually learn new material than to rely on using the work of others to get by in life. Education is priceless, and no one can take away what you learned. That is your power. Further, it is my responsibility to do my own research and assignments and to utilize helpful tools such as the CRAAP test to ensure that the information I am using is credible, and to always properly cite information that I choose to use in my papers.
A strategy for how I, as a scholar, could avoid making the same ethical mistake is to demonstrate an integral character by doing my own classwork in a timely manner and adhering to the rules. I apply this basic principle to my personal and professional life as well.
References:
American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/pubs/books/4200066
Students’ Rights and Responsibilities. (2018). UAGC. Retrieved from https://www.ashford.edu/student-rights-and-responsibilities.htm#academic-dishonesty
University of Arizona Global Campus (n.d.), Student Rights and Responsibilities. Retrieved from: https://www.uagc.edu/catalog/student-rights-and-responsibilities#academic-integrityLinks to an external site.
von Winckelmann, S. (2015). Information literacy in the digital age [Electronic version]. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
