Everyday Examples of Academic Dishonesty

Plagiarism

Clone - copying material verbatim.

Josiah has been very busy for the past week and pushed off a ten-page paper due at midnight. He texts his friend who took the class last semester for his old paper. Josiah promptly changes his name at the top and submits it for grading, passing it off as his own.

Copying portions of another person’s work.

Maria stumbled upon a research paper that had a chart relating to her project. Being crunched for time, she copied and pasted it into her document, but did not provide an in-text or full citation.

Find and replace – replacing words to try to bypass plagiarism detectors.

Molly didn’t feel like writing her research paper but found an essay online that fit the prompt. She used the “find and replace” feature to substitute synonyms for words to try and prevent SafeAssign from detecting plagiarism.

Remix – paraphrasing material, in your own words, from multiple sources.

Tyler is stuck on a sociology paper and decides to Google a summary of what he plans to write. He browses Wikipedia, a research paper he found on Google, and an article pertaining to the topic and decides to rewrite bits and pieces from each source to use in his paper.

Mashup – copy and pasting material from multiple sources.

Steven must write an essay on the history of the Cold War. He finds six different books while researching and concludes that they have summed up the material he needs for the essay. He meticulously takes bits and pieces from each book transitioning between each piece with his own words falsely illustrating individual work.

Citing sources incorrectly or fabricating sources.

Grant is writing a paper for his economics class and is struggling to find enough sources to meet the requirements of the assignment. He concludes that the only way to get the paper done and meet the requirements is to use the information he got from a different source and just create a new, false citation for the information to help him reach the citation requirements for the paper.

Citing an excess of sources to meet a word or page count.

Jacob is overdue on an essay in his Dance Theory class. He has a rough outline of the work he needs to do and how to organize his essay. To save time and meet his word count, he decides to include a full sentence(s) quote/citation approximately every three sentences. His works cited page is present, accurate, and comprehensive for all his sources. But in doing this, the essay is more than doubled in length.

Mirroring the structure/organization of another essay.

Elaina has an essay that is due tomorrow. She has done her own research and has her own information, but she does not know how to organize the essay correctly. She finds a paper on the same subject online and copies the exact order of the main points for her own paper. She submits the essay without citing the paper whose organization she copied.

Using past work that is your own (you need professor discretion to do so).

Mark is writing an essay about a topic he had previously studied in a different class. He decides he has a lot of other work to do and his last paper was fully original and well-written. He decides he wants to use the paper he previously wrote for this new assignment. Mark should first reach out to the professor and look through the syllabus for the policy rules on this issue. If the professor allows Mark to use the old paper, he should still make sure to develop the paper further, ensure it is all original work, and meets all the guidelines for the new assignment.

NOTE: You need to check with your professor for their specific policies regarding using past work.

Using past work that is your own (you need professor discretion to do so).

Mark is writing an essay about a topic he had previously studied in a different class. He decides he has a lot of other work to do and his last paper was fully original and well-written. He decides he wants to use the paper he previously wrote for this new assignment. Mark should first reach out to the professor and look through the syllabus for the policy rules on this issue. If the professor allows Mark to use the old paper, he should still make sure to develop the paper further, ensure it is all original work, and meets all the guidelines for the new assignment.

Paying online services or someone else to complete an assignment for you.

Stephen is stressing out about a paper for his Ag Business class that is due in two days. Stephen is behind on the material and doesn’t think he has enough time to finish the paper and do his other homework. He decides the best option to get the paper done and get a good grade is to pay a friend who took the class last semester to write his paper for him. The friend agrees and writes the paper for Stephen that he then submits for a grade.

Coding

Syntax Similarities:

Jacob is stuck on step 16 of a coding assignment due the next day. He has his friend Steven over at his dorm helping him and Steven simply does that step for him. While Steven can’t remember exactly what he did to get past it, what he does do for Jacob’s assignment is so similar in syntax that the auto grader flags Jacobs assignment for academic dishonesty.

Group Work & Collaboration

Excessive Continuity on Assignments

Sarah must submit an essay on the literary work: War and Peace. She decides to work on portions of the assignment with three other friends. A Google Doc among them is formed for brainstorming ideas. After a while, all the group members simply copy and paste content from the shared Google Docs into each of their individual essays. Despite Sarah having a hand in the conceptualization of this content, it is flagged for academic dishonesty.

Traditional Exams

Phones

Phones are prohibited on any exams. If your phone goes off during an exam, then you will most likely be given a 0%. Many professors will make you put your backpack at the front of the room before an exam, and we recommend that you stow away your phone in your bag to ensure it won’t be a distraction.

Open Book Exams

If your professor classifies that an exam is “Open Book”, the only resource you are permitted to use is the book. If you try to use your notes, you risk being reported to the professor. Use your notes only on “Open Note” exams and where otherwise stated.

Storing Notes in a Calculator

With the calculators that are often allowed in many classes that have graphing capability, it is also very easy to store information as notes in a section of the calculator and be able to quickly and discreetly access them during the exam. Jorge decided that this was a viable alternative to studying the night before his statistics final, and as he begins to take the exam, he runs across a question that he needs to know how to apply a specific formula. Naturally since he saved his notes to his fancy calculator, he opens it up and begins to work. This is considered academically dishonest behavior.

Unpermitted Calculators

Math 162, Calculus 2, is historically a very difficult class at Purdue. Most professors require students to only use a simple four function calculator on exams and homework assignments because more advanced calculators can do the more complex work for the students. Diana is really struggling on Calculus 2 and decides to take a graphing calculator into her second exam. She programs in equations and uses the advanced features to finish her exam and gets a very good grade, but when her professor reviews the exam, they notice that Diana was able to somehow skip steps as if she was using short cuts that haven’t been taught yet in class. Diana is called into the professor’s office and she is asked if she got an advanced tutor or how she was able to do the steps. She admits that she took in her graphing calculator and she ends up receiving an F for the entire class.

Taking an Exam for Someone Else

Alex was very unprepared for his upcoming stats exam. However, his friend, Stephen, passed the class last semester with an A+. Alex asks Stephen to take the exam for him, and Stephen agrees. When Stephen finishes Alex’s exam, he goes to turn it in to the professor, and is asked to show his ID. After the professor realizes what has happened, both Alex and Stephen are caught.

Non-Traditional Exams

Locked Down Browsers

When Claire takes her weekly quizzes for her online EAPS class, they require the use of the Lockdown Browser Software. She proceeds to run the software inside a virtual machine so she can still browse the Internet and other applications for the answers while she takes the quiz.

Open Book & Take-Home Exams

A professor makes a portion of each exam a take-home section for students to complete on their own time. He permits the use of notes, study materials, the Internet, and even collaboration on this take-home exam. Nathan works on some of the questions but is stuck on two main points. After texting his lab group, several students in the class get together to discuss the difficult problems.

Online Exams

Steven is taking an online exam that is not open book or open notes. He has quite a few friends in the class and they decide to take the exam together so they can talk about each question before submitting the exam. This is academically dishonest collaboration on an exam and has happened at Purdue. All students submitted the exam at the same time and received the same grade, so the professor was able to notice the collaboration. It turned out that over one third of the class took the exam this way and all these students were disciplined for their actions.
 

Online Resources

Chegg

Using Chegg dishonestly is very easy to do which is why it is important to understand proper and improper uses of this platform. Looking up answers to homework assignments or accessing the answers to assignments in teacher versions of textbooks is not an appropriate use of the site. While Chegg can be helpful to access textbooks and more practice problems, using this resource to find assignment answers is considered academic dishonesty because it is a form of copying and plagiarism.

Intellectual Property

Joe is working on a philosophy paper and is confused about how to answer the writing prompt for the assignment. He decides that he will just use the audio recording from his professor’s lecture to help him answer the prompt. He can’t come up with any of his own original thought for the paper, so he simply combines a bunch of the professor’s.