Plagiarism & Cheating

Crowder College is built on a foundation of academic integrity. The Crowder College Board of Trustees, faculty and staff have developed four Institutional Learning Outcomes that are advanced across the curriculum. One of these Institutional Learning Outcomes is Civic Responsibility and Ethical Reasoning Skills (C3) that states: “Students will be able to understand and articulate the various perspectives of ethical issues and understand ways they can exercise responsible citizenship in response to their learning.” An academic community assumes the standards of right or good conduct also apply to school work.

The most common forms of academic dishonesty are cheating and plagiarism. Examples of cheating and plagiarism are provided in this policy as a means of helping to define expectations. The examples are not exhaustive and should not be viewed as such.

Cheating may include using any unauthorized information, such as a copy of an examination before it is given, or personal electronic devices not allowed by the instructor. Inappropriate behavior could consist of collaborating with others on assignments without the consent of the instructor or collaborating with others to enable cheating. Other forms of dishonest behavior may include having another person take an exam for you, fabricating information such as data for a lab report, submitting material that is not yours as part of your course performance, or communicating with anyone other than a proctor or instructor during an exam.

Plagiarism is the use of another person’s words or ideas without giving that person appropriate credit. Academic work is evaluated on the assumption that the work presented is the student’s own. Plagiarism may include directly quoting the words of others without proper credit given to them and/or without using quotation marks or other accepted notations to identify the borrowed words. An additional example of plagiarism includes representing an idea or strategy as a student’s own when it comes from someone else. Plagiarism can also be simply using any prior work produced by the student for another course without prior approval from the current instructor.

Penalties for cheating in a class may include a zero grade on the assignment, a failing grade in the course, or any other course/school-related sanction the instructor and administration determine to be appropriate for the cheating incident such as suspension from Crowder College. Penalties for Plagiarism are as follows: first offense, a grade of zero on the assignment; second offense, failing grade in the class; third offense, suspension from Crowder College.