Academic integrity
Academic integrity means maintenance of honesty in studying and assessments. It is also the basis for making ethical decisions and behavior in the context of academics. Some of the values that inform academic integrity include trust, honesty, fairness, responsibility, courage, and respect. Any breach of Academic integrity is an academic misconduct or infraction. Academic violations are situations in which students seek to gain for themselves or assist others to gain an academic advantage through unfair means or deception.
Violations that violate the student code of academic integrity include plagiarism, unauthorized collaboration and use illegal materials, aiding others to commit academic misconduct, falsification and impersonation. Plagiarism is the practice of using other people’s ideas or works and claiming them to be your own. Plagiarism occurs in two forms, unintentional and intentional. Unintentional plagiarism is due to naivety, lack of understanding of learned behavior that is acceptable or lack of care. Avoiding this kind of piracy is easy. Intentional plagiarism, on the other hand, is gaining academic advantage through paraphrasing or copying work done by someone else and claiming it as your own, or giving someone your job to present it as your own. Moreover, it includes self-plagiarism where someone uses their work in a different course or academic programme without properly citing the source of the work. Intentional plagiarism is a serious infraction of academic integrity.
Unauthorized collaboration is a breach academic integrity which occur when one a student works with or shares work with others during a test or assessment designed as an individual task whereby different answers are required. This form of infraction does not include situations where students must present their work as a collaborative or group effort. Another type of violation to academic integrity is the use of unauthorized materials. Unless they are expressively allowed, resources such as notes, calculators or computers are not allowed in an examination or test.