7 Academic Integrity
Academic Expectations
All incoming Indiana University students are bound by the Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct. You are responsible for reading through the full code, knowing it, and following all rules and guide-lines. The Indiana Promise provides the framework for this code.
Academic integrity is a central value in American schools. To demonstrate academic integrity, you are expected to be honest and responsible in your academic work. If you are not, you are committing academic miscounduct. According to Part II of the IU Code of Conduct, academic misconduct is defined as “any activity that tends to undermine the academic integrity of the institution.”
The Code outlines six types of academic misconduct: cheating, interference, violation of course rules, fabrication, plagiarism, and facilitating academic dishonesty.
Cheating
Any time you do something to gain an unfair advantage over other students in your class, it is cheating. Examples of cheating include:
- Copying another student’s test answers or homework responses
- Working with other students on an assignment without permission
- Using notes, a book, a phone, or other resources on a quiz or test without permission
- Using reproduced or stolen exams or assignments for answers, or purchasing and submitting a paper that you did not write.
Interference
Attempting to do academic harm to another student is interference. This can include preventing their work from being submitted, destroying resources other students need to complete their work, or bribing an official to change another student’s grade. Interference can also occur if you take a test in a class in which you are not currently enrolled.
Fabrication
When you create fake data or information for use on an assignment or exam, it is fabrication. This includes falsifying interviews, citations, doctor’s notes, laboratory results, or observational data.
Violation of Course Rules
If you fail to follow the rules outlined in your syllabus, you are committing academic misconduct. Examples include attendance and clicker policies, written or verbal instructions, signing attendance sheets for other students, etc. You can ask your professor or call the Student Advocates Office if you don’t understand an instruction, policy, or rule.
Facilitating Academic Dishonesty
If you give another student answers to a quiz, test, or assignment, or if you allow another student to copy your work and submit it as their own, you are facilitating academic dishonesty. This includes taking pictures of an exam to share with friends.
If you choose to tutor other students, do not provide them with answers to assignments or write their papers. If someone asks you to give them answers to an assignment where the professor has not given permission for group-work, always say no.
Students can be charged with academic misconduct even if they are not enrolled in the course in which the misconduct occurs.
Plagiarism
The act of stealing or using someone else’s academic or scholarly work is plagiarism, and is taken very seriously at Indiana University. Any time you are using another person or group’s work or thoughts, you need to cite where you found the information. Use quotation marks whenever you use exact wording from the original source. In cases where you paraphrase or slightly alter the words, you should still include a citation of the original source.
Citations look different for various academic disciplines, so consult your syllabus for the preferred style manual to use when forming citations. The most common style manuals at Indiana University include MLA, Chicago, and APA. The library has resources about each of these styles in hardcopy books and on their website. If you aren’t sure when to cite informa-tion you can ask your professor or work with someone at Writing Tutorial Services.
Confused? Ask for help!
We understand that academic culture can vary by country and region, and that some of these rules or policies might be different from what you are used to. Ask for help if you have a question, if a concept is unclear, or if you don’t know if something you are thinking about doing constitutes academic misconduct.
IU has great resources available to assist you, including your professor or teaching assistant, Writing Tutorial Services, Academic Support Centers, the Student Advocates Office, and the Office of Student Affairs. You can learn more about these resources and how to contact them in the “Campus Services” section of this guidebook.