Reply to the discussion below in a 250 words format.
A view into Academic Integrity:
This paper focuses on the details of Academic Integrity as well as the importance it provides not only to students in college, but also to everyone’s mentality and growth towards knowledge gain and enhancement of one’s career. Some key points that will be talked about is different definitions for academic integrity and examples of what would be the opposite. The essay will also be touching on the idea of the responsibility put on students in order to do the right thing. Examples of what would be considered cheating and how it would affect both parties involved with it is also mentioned. In some parts I will be providing personal thoughts and anecdotes as well.
The video categorized as Video 1 is titled “Think Integrity: What is Academic Integrity”. It features students being asked the question of what they think is academic integrity. One girl, for example, explains academic integrity as “honesty in your academics” which is pretty spot on. Key words that I kept hearing were honesty and morality. Some examples of what cheating is to them would be using someone else’s ideas in a paper, getting answers from each other, stealing homework, and much more. I assume that teachers made this video and recorded some of their students in order to raise awareness to the community that being dishonest is not acceptable. The video categorized as Video 2 is from the same University, called Macewan University, and focuses on student responsibility regarding academic integrity. One of the key responsibilities of being a student is to be informed about policies and following these policies into their academic life. This also includes refraining from making other students break the rules. They also offered ways in which you can prove you weren’t dishonest if you were falsely accused. This happened to me once in Middle School where I was falsely accused of copying a paper and it turned out that I didn’t copy anything, there was just a fault in the document I used that made it look like it was plagiarized. Lastly, the third video is not from the University the other two videos were made from. The title of this video is “A Message of Academic Integrity: Intellectual Theft”. The difference of this video and the other ones is that this was made by a student, not a teacher. They also used the method of storytelling in order to further prove their point, while the other two videos decided on just asking 5-6 students what their opinion was on academic integrity. The story shows a student who is unorganized. He has messy hair and desk, he overslept, procrastinated his assignments, has a C in the class, and has junk food mixed with his papers. On the other hand we have a student with all her books opened next to her in an organized way and an apple and banana next to her. Compared to the other student, this one actually has time to spare rather than procrastinating her assignments. Afterwards we see the unorganized student literally steal the other student’s paper from her hand and run away. Even though this is a very exaggerated version of what actually happens, it’s not wrong. By showing this scene, the students wanted to preface the fact that stealing ideas without giving them proper credit is not morally correct.
One of the issues of academic integrity mentioned in the videos is why it is important in this video to be academically honest. A good way of seeing this is by putting yourself in the shoes of someone who actually put in the hard work into an essay, only for you to use that hard work for your own gain. Not only did you hurt that other person by copying their ideas, but you also gained nothing from it. That’s when you have to think why you are in school and what you are doing it for. If you don’t do anything of the work you are supposed to do, then how are you gaining any knowledge from the classes that you are paying for? This is why so many people, when they graduate, are not capable of doing the job that they are supposed to do based on their career. It’s because, since they didn’t learn anything, they aren’t capable or just don’t have the skills to do what they are asked.
The second issue I found to bring my attention was ignorance. Students should not be ignorant of the rules since they will be punished regardless of whether they knew or not that what they were doing was wrong. They are responsible of knowing the policies that the school provides in order to maintain order. Additionally, if you know the rules, then you can act accordingly for you are falsely accused of doing something you know you didn’t do.
Another issue seen in the videos regarding academic integrity is not allowing others to violate the policies. I feel like they failed to mention that applies also to when you see others cheating. When you see other cheating, you should intervene and stop them. It’s not okay to just continue with your day. It’s similar to when you are walking in the street and you see someone steal someone’s purse. Do you walk away, or do you help the person?We all want to be exemplar students but fail to see that when you see someone doing the wrong thing, people look away and mind their own business.
Some of the relevant lessons that I learned from these videos are similar to the issues. One of the lessons is that when you refrain from helping other students attempt to violate a policy, you are refraining from being dishonest. However, I feel like they should also add that not doing anything about it is also somewhat dishonest. There’s a huge issue with this because students don’t want to be excluded by their peers just because they told the teacher he saw cheating in front of them. No one wants to be bullied for being the teacher’s pet, which is something that happens a lot. One way to avoid this is maybe doing an anonymous submission.
Another lesson is that submitting someone else’s work as one’s own work is theft of ideas. The lesson here is that stealing something that’s another person’s property is not morally correct. Something we should have in mind is the other persons hard work and how much time they put into their creations. Taking advantage of that doesn’t make us any good and doesn’t benefit anyone. As an artist, I see a lot of people post their creations that they saw from another artist. Even posts in Tik Tok are exactly the same, the only difference is the person presenting their jokes, art, or information. People then get mad because they want people to know it was them who thought of the idea.
Something we should also all have in mind is that being an intellectual theft doesn’t only mean that you are copying word for word someone else’s essay. It can also mean that you are just changing some key words and phrases in order to make it look like it’s original. Some people manage to get away with this, but the problem with doing this is that you aren’t able to evoke into your work your own personal thoughts and opinions and y9our point of view on the matter you are talking about.
Overall, I think this is a morally difficult concept to talk about since students aren’t the only ones who struggle with integrity. It is taught to us that we should be academically honest, however, is anyone really honest. I know a lot of people who have gotten very successful by cheating. It is ethically and morally correct? Absolutely not. However, has it happened numerous times in history? Yes. What we have to ask ourselves is, “who do we want to be and how do we want to get there”. We all have a choice to make.
References
Kira Tangney. (2014, January 18). A Message of Academic Integrity: Intellectual Theft [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIuNVzzZ0E8
MacEwan University. (2013a, February 6). Think Integrity: What are the students’ responsibilities? (video 2) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRJcBnTx1yQ
MacEwan University. (2013, February 6). Think Integrity: What is academic integrity? (video 1) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3yvl3im7oM
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