Academic Honesty/Honor Code
ACADEMIC HONESTY/HONOR CODE
It is the expectation that all students at Gwinnett Online Campus will exhibit academic integrity when completing their coursework. Plagiarism, which involves taking someone else's words or creation and passing them off as your own or stealing ideas from an existing source and presenting them as new and original, is strictly prohibited. The following definitions and explanations clarify and explain the Gwinnett Online Campus local school process regarding plagiarism in essays, research papers and other writing across all subject areas. The goal here is to clearly show the difference between original scholarship, sloppy scholarship and plagiarism.
PLAGIARISM
Plagiarism is the act of stealing, using, and/or representing another person’s ideas or words as your own writing or ideas.
Examples of plagiarism include, but are not limited to:
- Copying phrases, sentences or paragraphs without quotations marks and giving proper source information
- Paraphrasing or summarizing ideas without giving proper source information
- Selling or giving work to another student to submit it as his or her own (contract cheating)
- Asking someone or paying someone to create a work you intend to call your own (contract cheating)
- Downloading or copying information from the internet and submitting it entirely or partially as your own
- Submitting another student’s work as your own
Possible consequences for plagiarism:
- Zero for the assignment
- Teacher will contact the parent(s).
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Student will be required to demonstrate mastery of the assignment in a proctored setting
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Multiple offenses will result in consequences in addition to a zero.
For more information about plagiarism and how to avoid it, please visit www.plagiarism.org.
ORIGINAL SCHOLARSHIP
Original scholarship is work where all ideas are the writer’s own or considered common knowledge (i.e., general knowledge that the average educated reader would know without having to look it up). When using information from other sources (through direct quotes, paraphrasing, or summarizing), give credit to those sources by using a recognized citation method and include enough information in the citation so that the reader can locate the original work on their own.
SLOPPY SCHOLARSHIP
Sloppy scholarship is work that contains original scholarship, but has carelessly cited information from other sources.
Examples of sloppy scholarship include, but are not limited to:
- Using one citation at the end of a paragraph when part of the information may not have come from that one source or it may have come from another source
- Omitting or using incorrect punctuation marks in citations
- Inconsistent or incorrect use of recognized citation method
- Putting quotation marks around a piece of information without giving an in-text citation
- Including a works cited page without properly acknowledging citations within the paper
- Including proper citations within the paper without a corresponding entry in the works cited page
- Accidentally distorting or misinterpreting an author’s original meaning
Consequences for sloppy scholarship:
- Point deduction according to the rubric or scoring method
- In some cases, students may be required to correct the errors in sloppy scholarship.