COMM Academic Integrity Essay PDF

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1 Academic Integrity: Be a genuine thinker, not a plagiarizer Nhi Nguyen Northern Alberta Institute of Technology COMM1101.1201.OA03. Mr. Greg Beck Ford September 20, 2020

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According to a study from 2012 to 2015 by Dr. Donald McCabe and the International Center for Academic Integrity, 62 percent of 71,300 undergraduate students, 58 percent of 70,000 high school students, and 40 percent of 17,000 graduates admitted to plagiarism. Although all post-secondary institutions dignify academic integrity and emphasize its importance to all students, plagiarism, which is to use another person's work and pass it off as one's own work, still seems to be rampant. Avoiding plagiarism is extremely crucial since it undoubtedly violates the academic integrity's standard, and its consequences for students might be severe. Moreover, plagiarism prevents students from being a genuine thinker and weakens their analytical characteristics. Therefore, students should comprehend what can be considered as plagiarism, its causes, and its consequences in order to prevent plagiarism. There are many issues surrounding plagiarism that students need to understand to successfully avoid it. According to the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology's (NAIT) Student Rights and Responsibilities Policy (2017), plagiarism is "the representation of another individuals work as one’s own or the failure to adequately attribute work to its original creator" (pg. 2). "Plagiarism is rooted in a lack of integrity" (Kapp, 2017, para. 12). This statement indicates students who understand plagiarism but still plagiarize because of laziness and lack of integrity. For instance, they copy or paraphrase the work that they find on the internet, and they deliberately present it as theirs without providing credit. However, students may also unintentionally plagiarize by only citing sources in the reference page but not in the paper itself and believing that they do not have to cite the sources since paraphrasing is adequate, which indicates ignorance and negligence. Moreover, plagiarism is not just when students use others' words and ideas in their written assignments but also when students use others' data or images in their oral presentations or projects. Essentially, thoroughly understanding plagiarism and what constitutes it is the foundation to avoid it.

3 Knowing the consequences of plagiarism significantly helps students appreciate the importance to avoid it. Indeed, plagiarism undermines students' creativity, self-confidence, and integrity. When students encounter a new topic or question, if they can immediately google it and plagiarize the answers to take a shortcut, they will start to excessively depend on others' intellectual before they study the issue carefully. This behaviour will discourage students to believe in themselves and think critically. By using online tools and others' work to complete the assignments, students do not develop their perspective independently, creatively, and genuinely. Furthermore, the penalties for plagiarism are various if instructors or post-secondaries discover that students plagiarize. Students will most likely lose points or receive bad grades for being caught plagiarizing for the first time, but suspension or exclusion may also be the consequences for those who plagiarize repeatedly. At NAIT, the resolutions that instructors can offer to students who violate the principles of Academic Integrity are "grade reduction for the sections of the assignment that are in question" and an "opportunity to submit corrected or new assignment for re-grading" (NAIT, 2017, pg. 3). Therefore, students can simultaneously see disciplinary action, reflect on their assignments, and correct their misconducts. For that reason, knowing the consequences of plagiarism definitely reassures students to withstand it. Avoiding plagiarism can be challenging and time-consuming for students since it requires considerable effort and discretion. To avoid it, students have to carefully learn about citation style, use style guides that their instructors or schools offer, and always double-check if they cite sources properly. They can also ask for assistance from their instructors and even librarians. NAIT, for example, has its own subject librarians for each school and program to support students in assessing the quality of the information students research and creating citations properly (NAIT Library Services, n.d.). The most important feature is that students should be conscientious in their note-taking, which is to use quotation marks when they use exact words from others, provide citations when they paraphrase one's ideas, and always copy

4 the URL when they use Internet sources (University of Alberta, n.d.). All of these tips for avoiding plagiarism demands students to spend a great deal of effort and attention, but they can help students study effectively and fully develop good study habits. Plagiarism is considered a violation of academic integrity, and it has many detrimental effects on students' critical thinking ability, causing students to study passively. Therefore, avoiding plagiarism is crucially important.

5 References: International Center for Academic Integrity & McCabe, D. (n.d.) Statistics. International Center for Academic Integrity. https://www.academicintegrity.org/statistics/ Kapp, J. (2017, July 29). Plagiarism: It’s more than just borrowing words. HuffPost. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/plagiarism-its-more-than-_b_11200872 NAIT. (2017). Student rights and responsibilities policy. Moodle. https://moodle.nait.ca/pluginfile.php/10148976/mod_resource/content/1/SR %201.0%20Student%20Rights%20and%20Responsibilities%20Policy%20%282%29.pdf NAIT. (2017). Academic Integrity Procedure. https://www.nait.ca/nait/about/corporatestructure/legal/nait-policies-procedures NAIT Library Services. (n.d.) Need helps? NAIT. https://library.nait.ca/ls?id=kb_article&sysparm_article=KB0016551 University of Alberta. (n.d.). Academic integrity: Plagiarism. https://www.ualberta.ca/currentstudents/academic-resources/academic-integrity/plagiarism.html...