Academic Honesty

National Park College considers honesty and integrity as essential qualities of any learning institution.  The faculty and staff strive to live up to these qualities in all aspects of their lives and encourage their students to do the same. Integrity and moral values will carry over in to their professional lives and careers. NPC’s goal is to successfully prepare all students for their futures and equip them to handle whatever challenges they may face; therefore, NPC considers academic dishonesty as unacceptable.

Any NPC students who display dishonesty in their behavior while attending classes at NPC will be subject to disciplinary action to help the student first and foremost, but to also protect the rights, dignity, and property of others while maintaining an environment that fosters success and learning.

Violations of the Academic Honesty Policy will not be tolerated on the campus. Violations may range from receiving an “F” on the assignment in question up to permanent removal from the college. The Academic Honesty Policy below covers several major areas that should be considered in all classes offered at NPC:

1. Technology manipulation
2. Collusion
3. Deception
4. Misrepresentation and Lying
5. Cheating
6. Plagiarism
7. Fabrication and Falsification
8. Stealing, Defacing, and Destruction of Property
    

Why Some Students Cheat - Identify the Causes

NPC’s goal is to help its students succeed; they want this as well.  This fact, plus other factors in their lives may promote the idea that they need to cheat or act in a dishonest way for the following reasons:

• Fear of failure
• Desire for better grades
• Pressure from parents to do well
• Unclear instructional objectives
• Everyone else is doing it
• There is little chance of being caught
• There is little or no punishment if one does get caught

NPC works hard to consider these extenuating factors and takes necessary actions to help reduce these reasons or situations that can add to the stress of any student’s ability to succeed.  However, there are no valid reasons to justify being dishonest.  NPC promises to do all it can to help students so they can be successful and at the same time maintain their integrity.
 

Dishonesty with Technology

Technology Manipulation

NPC makes use of technology in every possible way.  The internet is used as well as a variety of computers.  Homework assignments are submitted online with NPC’s learning management system.  The world is highly technology-oriented.  The use of technology has created opportunities in which students can be dishonest, and can manipulate it in various ways:

• Use breakdowns of technology as an excuse
• Exploit loopholes, glitches, or bugs in technology to one’s advantage (ex: retaking a test when the instructor is unaware due to a glitch in the exam delivery system)
• Use of the Internet or other means to gain unauthorized access to exam questions

Collusion

What is Collusion?  It is the act of cheating in an organized way.  It is where students work together to accomplish the act of cheating.  Technology today makes it very easy to copy information on one’s cell phone and send that information to another student.  Collusion involves organized cheating between two or more students, exchanging information, and copying of work and submitting as their own.  In some cases, collusion involves making threats, manipulating others, and using money or other items of value to coerce someone into cheating or helping them cheat.

Deception

Deception is another form of cheating that differs from collusion.  It is when a student breaks an agreement about what is an acceptable means to complete an assignment.  Deception includes:

• Copying from another student without their permission
• Using instructor notes from previous semesters
• Getting assistance during an exam without permission, possibly from someone not in the class
• Using paid online services to complete work. See Misrepresentation.
• Misrepresentation and Lying
• Misrepresentation and lying is submitting work that was done by someone else.  In addition, it is the use of online services to purchase completed homework assignments.  It can also mean paying another person to take the class for a student or participating in the class in some unauthorized way.  Other forms of misrepresentation include:
• Using computer programs generated by another and submitting the work as a student’s own unless expressly allowed by the instructor
• Using another person’s identification or password as a student’s own
• Lying to an instructor to increase a student’s grade
• Lying or misrepresenting facts when confronted with an allegation of academic dishonesty
• Making false claims or giving misleading information to the instructor to be excused from classes, assignments, or exams
• Intentionally underperforming on a placement exam

Cheating and Plagiarism

Cheating

Some forms of cheating by means of technology have been addressed thus far, but cheating is a broad term that covers many things.  Some of the other forms of cheating that are not acceptable at NPC are:

• Sharing the test questions before or after taking a test or exam
• Copying the test questions and/or storing them on a personal computer
• Obtaining or attempting to obtain copies of an exam
• Using or consulting unauthorized materials, equipment, or devices on quizzes, assignments, or examinations such as electronic devices, textbooks, notes, etc. during a closed book exam
• Altering or falsifying any information on assignments
• Using any material portion of a paper or project to fulfill the requirements of more than one course unless the student has received prior faculty permission to do so
• Submitting an altered examination or assignment to an instructor for re-grading
• Inappropriately providing or receiving information or academic work to gain unfair advantage over others, such as selling or buying a copy of test questions before a test
• Attempting to gain an unfair academic advantage by bribery
• Changing or altering grades or other official educational records
• Continuing work on an examination after the allocated time has ended and working on any examination, quiz, or assignment outside of the time constraints imposed
• Stealing, copying, or modifying computer programs and presenting them as one’s own; this includes the use of another student’s program and or password as obtained from any source
• Stealing visual concepts, such as drawings, sketches, diagrams, musical programs, and scores, graphs, maps, etc., and presenting them as one’s own
• Plagiarizing any assignment.  See Plagiarism for more details.

Plagiarism

What is Plagiarism? Plagiarism is defined as:

• Stealing and passing off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own
• Using (another’s production) without crediting the source
• Committing literary theft
• Presenting as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source

Plagiarism is an act of fraud.  It involves stealing the work of someone and lying about it afterwards.  Plagiarism can also include:

• Turning in someone else’s work as one’s own
• Copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit
• Failing to put a quote from a source or multiple sources in quotation marks
• Giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation
• Changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit
• Copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up most of one’s work regardless if credit is given
• Using one’s own past work for future assignments and not citing oneself as a reference

Plagiarism can easily be avoided by properly citing the sources of the information; However, it is considered cheating whether it is intentional or not.

Other Forms of Dishonesty

Fabrication and Falsification

Fabrication and Falsification include actions such as:

• Citing a nonexistent source
• Inventing data to support conclusions
• Citing information incorrectly from a source (i.e.: where that information is not included in the source or is stated differently in the source, or distorting the meaning or application of data, inflating results, and presenting results out of context)
• Citing a source when it was not cited or used in the body of the paper (i.e.: adding a long bibliography or a works cited page to a paper to make it seem well researched when those sources have not been cited or used; if a source is listed, then it must be used somewhere in the assignment and properly cited.)

Stealing, Defacing, or Destroying of Property

Stealing, Defacing, or Destroying of Property involves a situation where a student takes any campus materials, academic work, or other objects that do not belong to the student and uses them for the student’s own purposes, damages them in some way, or destroys them.  Examples of this are:

• Stealing classroom or lab materials
• Borrowing materials with or without permission and failing to return them
• Stealing or not returning borrowed books and materials from the Campus Library
• Defacing furniture, or classroom/facilities, and materials including library books
• Intentionally or unintentionally causing destruction of campus materials due to malice or neglect

Consequences and Penalties for Academic Dishonesty

If an instructor suspects that a student has behaved in a dishonest way in her/his submission of work, the instructor will first investigate the matter and discuss the situation with the student to gather all the facts.  If dishonesty is evident, any of the following consequences may be imposed at the discretion of the instructor:

• The student will receive a 0 or an “F” on work submitted dishonestly
• The student will receive an “F” in the course for work submitted dishonestly
• If violations of the Academic Honesty Policy are severe, the instructor may seek disciplinary action in accordance with the Student Code of Conduct procedures outlined in the student handbook. Such disciplinary action could result in:
• The student will be suspended from NPC for a period of one year
• The student will be dismissed from the college with a notice placed on their permanent academic record.

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