Academic Honesty

Academic honesty is an issue all across the united states. It is found all the way down in middle school up to colleges and universities. It is defined as any behavior or act that implies an intent to make someone believe what is not true, as by giving a false appearance. This website is from Washington University and it has a good overview of what academic honesty is and the different kinds of things that are dishonest. It also contains the repercussions that Washington University inflicts for cheating. Plagiarism is the most common type of cheating. Dictionary.com defines plagiarism as "the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work." Ways to avoid plagiarism are to summarize information in your own words, to use statements that credits the source, or to use quotations around words or phrases that you don't want to change. Other suggestions can be found on this website from Purdue Univeristy; it explains safe practices for plagiarism. Many students commit plagiarism on accident. A lot of times students will be researching to write a paper and will use sentences and parts of their research in their own paper. Also by citing a lot of resources in their paper it makes their information seem more credible but too many quotations and using parts of others work without giving them credit for it can cause plagiarism. Some students resort to plagiarism and cheating because of pressure that is put on them to get good grades. It also seems that it has been more acceptable because "helping" friends on tests does not seem like cheating to many students. There are also reasons like poor work ethic and not enough time to come up with their own original work. The website Why Students Cheat from the University of British Columbia explains many common reasons why students commit the act of cheating. Many students think it is okay to cheat if they can easily get away with it but building this kind of mind set can effect them later in life. If they don't learn how to do things honestly then they will not know how to do anything correctly in the long run. As courses get harder and more demanding it is important to know how to do your own work and do it well. This website explains the benefits to academic honesty and why it is important for the future to maintain it now.