Analysing Possible Violations Of Academic Intergrity

Analyzing possible violations of academic integrity

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Analyzing possible violations of academic integrity

If student A is told by his professor that half of his work matches with a paper that was previously submitted in a Walden Course, then the student has violated the Walden’s Academic Policy. In accordance with Walden Academic Policy, plagiarism is defined as the use of intellectual material that is produced by an individual without giving due significance to the acknowledgment of source. It includes an act of cheating and other incidents of inadequacy or lack of citations that are directed by an individual's will. Subject scenario refers to intentional plagiarism that includes cutting and pasting the text of some original source or text in one’s own paper without marking the text in the form of a quotation. The same happened in this case and it ultimately violates Walden's academic integrity policies. It is obvious that if an individual is found to have half of the text copied from some previous document then it must be a violation because Walden’s policy of academic integrity affirms that an individual should not copy some other's task. However, the situation would be different if a student would have cited the work that he paraphrased but it was total copying of text which violates academic integrity. Moreover, Walden’s policy highlights that students are only allowed to read the prior submitted files of the course after approval from the instructor but they are never allowed to paste it in their task. As none of the integrity policies are found to be followed in this case so it is a case of violating academic integrity. This case is more like impersonation because the student has directly copied and pasted the work. Although he has added some of his own understanding, still half of his task seems to be similar with the already submitted task of the course, without any approval or prior information that is given to or from the professor.

There are different tools that can be used to detect similarity index taking into account that each of the tools has a different approach towards the identification of authenticity and acceptable similarity index. SafeAssign is one of the plagiarism detection tools that can help to check and see the similarity index of the text with some external or secondary resources. Taking into account the case in which a student use plagiarism detection tool and found 30% similarity index with the course material then there are certain dimensions to consider. If the student has not cited the work that is rephrased, paraphrased or quoted then it is a clear violation of Walden’s academic integrity policies because it would be considered as plagiarism. Although similarity index would be from the source material, if it would not be cited, it would be considered as a text that lacks copyright adherence. It is asserted that the students should cite all the materials and sources that are used in the text. Another dimension that is associated with this case is, if the student has properly cited the text and it is found to be 30%, then the assignment or work is acceptable because the acceptable similarity index for SafeAssign is between 15 to 40 percent. However, the plagiarized text also matters, because if the students have just copied text in the form of sentences and it is not adequately cited and quoted than it would be counted as an abrogation or violation of Walden’s Academic Integrity Policy. So, it is asserted that there are few dimensions to consider when deciding the authenticity of the text, such as the citation of text in the form of quotations and the type of documents that require copied lines or sentences. However, in a general context, 30% plagiarism work from actual source is acceptable with citations.

There are different forms of plagiarism, taking into account that it ranges from copying and pasting to the quoting of text with citations. Walden’s academic integrity policy has directed students to follow some regulations that can help to authorize the text as originally belonging to the writer, taking into account that all relevant facts and figures are quoted that can impact the honesty of work submitted to the instructor. In this scenario, if a student is told by the instructor that 20% of paper contained same word to word source language and the quoted text is also cited but there are no quotation marks, then the student has violated Walden's Academic integrity policy. In accordance with the policy framework, it is asserted that quotation marks serve as one of the markers for the reader. It is asserted that quotation marks show where the voice of the author ends and where the voice of source starts. When a writer put quotation marks, it is easy to identify the facts and figures that are copied or retrieved from the original source. In the case, this scenario would be a violation of the Walden’s academic honesty and integrity policies because it would be considered as a plagiarized or copied text. Moreover, the scenario of similarity index is also a concern taking into account that copying a text from word to word is also counted as plagiarism. If the task required an exact word to word scenario and there are no quotation marks then it is an evident case of plagiarism because quotation marks are one of the major necessity to show that the text is quoted from some other sources that are either a supporting material or some original source that is used for supporting the task to do.