Academic Dishonesty
Both the Honor Code and the Student Conduct Code, (section 2.00, Appendix A in the Student Handbook) prohibit academic dishonesty, defined as “All forms of academic dishonesty including cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, and facilitating or allowing academic dishonesty in any academic exercise. Cheating means using or attempting to use unauthorized materials, information or study aids. Fabrication means falsification or unauthorized invention of any information or citation. Plagiarism means representing the words or ideas of another as one’s own. Direct quotations must be indicated and ideas of another must be appropriately acknowledged.” Faculty are strongly encouraged to include a statement on the syllabus reminding students that academic dishonesty is not acceptable. For example, UWG's College of Education requires that the following statement be included in syllabi: "Students are expected to adhere to the highest standards of academic honesty. Plagiarism occurs when a student uses or purchases ghost-written papers. It also occurs when a student utilizes the ideas of or information obtained from another person without giving credit to the person. If plagiarism or another act of academic dishonesty occurs, it will be dealt with in accordance with the academic misconduct policy as stated in the Student Handbook, Undergraduate Catalog, and Graduate Catalog."
- Faculty can help decrease academic dishonesty by educating students about plagiarism and its consequences. There has been some speculation that the current "web generation" of students, who are able to "cut and paste" with such ease, and who use many websites where original sources are not cited, may not have a clear understanding of issues related to intellectual property. If you require students to write papers for class, consider having a class discussion about plagiarism, with a particular focus on appropriate and inappropriate use of information from the web.
- If a student commits academic dishonesty in your class, you may treat this as a grade issue (for example, assigning the student a 0 or an F on an assignment or for the semester). If so, you should inform the Vice President for Academic Affairs office, as outlined in the Honor Code. A student may appeal a grade as outlined in Appendix E of the Student Handbook.
- You may also treat academic dishonesty as a campus discipline issue. If so, send an e-mail report documenting the situation in as much detail as possible to Trish Causey, tcausey@westga.edu, Director of Judicial Affairs. A member of Ms. Causey's staff will then follow the student disciplinary process. Because the student is guaranteed certain due process rights, this process may not happen as quickly as you would like; however, we will conduct the process as quickly as we can.