Academic Integrity (Cheating and Plagiarism)

As members of the college community, students at Cañada are expected to demonstrate integrity in all academic endeavors. Students are evaluated on their own merits, so they should protect academic integrity at Cañada College and be proud of their achievements.

General principles of academic integrity include the concept of respect for the intellectual property of others, the expectation that individual work will be submitted unless otherwise allowed by an instructor, and the obligations both to protect one’s own academic work from misuse by others and to avoid using another’s work as one’s own. Faculty, with the full support of the College, have the right to take standards of academic integrity into account when assigning grades. All students are expected to understand and abide by these principles.

Any act which gains or is intended to gain an unfair academic advantage or which compromises the integrity of the academic standards of the college may be considered an act of academic dishonesty.

Forms of Academic Dishonesty:

Violations or attempted violations of academic integrity include, but are not limited to: cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, multiple submissions, or facilitating academic dishonesty. Please note that culpability is not diminished when academic dishonesty occurs in drafts which are not the final version. Also, if the student receives any type of assistance or disability accommodations in the preparation or submission of materials, the student is expected to proofread the results and is responsible for all particulars of the submission.

Cheating

Failure to observe the expressed procedures of an academic exercise, including but not limited to:

communicating with fellow students during an exam, copying material from another student’s exam, allowing another student to copy from an exam, allowing another person to take a quiz, exam, or similar evaluation in lieu of the enrolled student
using unauthorized materials, information, or study aids (e.g., textbook, notes, data, images, formula list, dictionary, calculator, etc.) in any academic exercise or exam
unauthorized collaboration in providing or requesting assistance, such as sharing information on an academic exercise or exam
unauthorized use of another person’s data in completing a computer exercise
using computer and word processing systems to gain access to, alter and/or use unauthorized information
altering a graded exam or assignment and requesting that it be regraded -- submission of altered work after grading shall be considered academically dishonest, including but not limited to changing answers after an exam or assignment has been returned or submitting another’s exam as one’s own to gain credit
attempting to hinder the work of another student

Fabrication

Falsification or invention of any information in an academic exercise, including but not limited to:

altering data to support research
presenting results from research that was not performed-submitting material for lab assignments, class projects or other assignments which is wholly or partially falsified, invented or otherwise does not represent work accomplished or undertaken by the student
crediting source material that was not used for research
falsification, alteration or misrepresentation of official or unofficial records or documents including but not limited to academic transcripts, academic documentation, letters of recommendation, and admissions applications or related documents

Plagiarism

The presentation of another’s words, images or ideas as if they were the student’s own, including but not limited to:

the submission of material, whether in part or whole, authored by another person or source (e.g., the internet, book, journal, etc.), whether that material is paraphrased, translated or copied in verbatim or near-verbatim form without properly acknowledging the source (i.e. all sources of information must be cited in work submitted for a grade)
the submission of material edited, in part or whole, by another person that results in the loss of the student’s original voice or ideas (i.e. while an editor or tutor may advise a student, the final work submitted must be the work of the student, not that of the editor or tutor)
translating all or any part of material from another language and presenting it as if it were student’s own original work
unauthorized transfer and use of another person’s computer file as the student’s own
unauthorized use of another person’s data in completing a computer exercise

Multiple Submissions

Resubmission of a work that has already received credit with identical or similar content in another course without consent of the present instructor or submission of work with identical or similar content in concurrent courses without consent of all instructors.

Facilitating Academic Dishonesty

Assisting another to commit an act of academic dishonesty, including but not limited to:

taking a quiz, exam, or similar evaluation in place of another person
allowing one student to copy from another
attending a course posing as another student who is officially registered for that course
providing material or other information (e.g., a solution to homework, a project or other assignments, a copy of an exam, exam key or any test information) to another student with knowledge that such assistance could be used in any of the violations stated above.
distribution or use of notes or recordings based on college classes without the express permission of the instructor for purposes other than individual or group study. This includes, but is not limited to, providing materials for distribution by services publishing class notes. This restriction on unauthorized use applies to all information distributed or in any way displayed for use in relationship to the class, whether obtained in class, via email, on the Internet or via any other media.

*Some parts of this document were borrowed from the academic integrity policies of UCLA, De Anza College and USC. Modifications were made in order to address the specific needs of the Cañada College community.