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Academic Integrity – Writing With Sources

This document introduces you to, and reminds you of, the importance of integrity as the critical foundation of academic writing. This session will impact the way you approach academic writing by informing you of the consequences of plagiarism and the benefits of becoming a responsible member of a community of researchers, and by providing tools for integrating source material into your writing.

Objectives

• Learn the definition of academic integrity and how it applies to your work.
• Review and discuss Capella University's Academic Honesty policy.
• Analyze and evaluate examples of summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting.
• Apply discussion and tools to future writing projects.

Related Colloquia Courseroom Activities

• Personal Writing Assessment.

Definitions and Standards of Academic Integrity

At Capella, we focus on a scholar-practitioner model, which means that our academic work is informed by both scholarship and practitioner work in the larger field. Academic integrity skills are vital because the academic course work that you complete is also informing your practitioner work; thus, the skills you use to set the academic foundation, by proxy, also set the foundation for the practitioner work and research that evolves from within your academic work.

To begin shaping our understanding of academic integrity, we start with a definition. Academic integrity, in general terms, is defined as adhering to a set of accepted standards while engaged in completing academic requirements. Further, academic integrity reflects values and beliefs that support the development of the scholar-practitioner.

Learners are expected to know the university's policy on academic honesty as presented on the Learner iGuide (University Policies, Academic Standards). Capella's Academic Honesty policy states:

"Learners are expected to be the sole authors of their work. Use of another's ideas must be accompanied by specific citation and reference. In addition, a learner may not submit the same work for credit in more than one course."

This definition further enhances our general definition by noting some key specifics:

1. All ideas from outside sources must be cited.
   
   This point is relevant because intellectual property is protected under the U.S. Constitution. Academic writers are expected to cite and note the ideas of those who wrote before them in order to advance and build upon those prior ideas; however, failure to inform a reader that an idea came from another source is a violation of that source's intellectual property rights.
   
   Perhaps more important in this context, your readers can neither accept nor cite any work that does not adhere to academic standards, including the appropriate citation of outside authors. Thus, if you write an article with inappropriate or insufficient citation, good peer reviewers will have to reject your work because it does not adhere to the academic standards designed to keep the knowledge pool free from errors.
   
   

   Academic writing is only valid when the reader can use the Reference page to trace back to the original sources cited. If the path back to the original sources is broken or severed, the academic community will have to consider the sources invalid because the original materials cannot be reviewed and verified. This reality is the basis of writing and working within a peer-reviewed community of researchers. Similarly, if you find that you cannot return to the original cited sources, as a member of the academic community, you too must negate that work as invalid and unreliable for further scholarly reference.

2. All written work for an assignment must be original and created specifically for that assignment. Learners cannot recycle the same papers or discussions for a later course, even though the topics and assignments may seem similar in nature.
   
   This point is relevant for two key reasons:
   • Capella is a highly accredited university, and the standards of those accreditations are met by learner completion of a certain number of course hours in a particular field. To maintain those accreditation standards, Capella is required to evidence that learners are only given credit for an assignment on one occasion, within the parameters of the class in which the assignment is given. Thus, by submitting the same work twice, the learner has violated this basic standard for accreditation.
   • Capella's curriculum is finely calibrated to prepare learners to write comprehensive exams and to complete an original dissertation. While many assignments may seem similar from a general perspective, the measurements used to evaluate learner execution of a given assignment often measure performance and answers on a different scale. Measurements typically become more detailed and fine-tuned as the curriculum progresses through tracks. Therefore, while you may examine a topic from a general perspective early in Track 1, when the topic appears again in Track 3, you are likely being asked to write on it from the informed perspective lent by your additional course work.

We all have experience with academic integrity and the APA method of citation, as the tenets of this citation method underpin all work at Capella, from discussion posts to papers to dissertation and publication. Those experiences shape our understanding of academic integrity, so we begin by working to define, as a group, what academic integrity means in our daily lives and studies.

Procedures and Sanctions for Academic Integrity Infractions

To maintain and instruct on best practices in academic integrity, Capella adheres to a clearly defined set of standards and procedures on academic integrity.

Remember; your faculty knows that you are not born knowing the tenets of best practices for academic integrity. That is why they work with you throughout your program in sessions like this one to offer instruction and guidance on mastering these important and foundational skills.

When you are uncertain about a citation or about which methods to use to adhere to best practices, ask your instructor. The goal is not to be perfect; the goal is to learn what the standards are and to work throughout your academic career to maintain those standards to the best of your ability.

Please note that when a learner is examined for possible infractions of academic integrity, the learner has the right to read and understand all allegations and to respond in earnest to any such claims.

Below are the possible sanctions that Capella may levy for academic integrity infractions:

1. Informal Intervention: The instructor informs the learner of the problems and offers guidance on how they can be remedied. The instructor determines the sanction.
   • A copy of the informal sanction is sent to the learner and to the university, as per established practice for the school.
2. Formal Intervention: The instructor considers the violation of the Academic Honesty policy severe and beyond the scope of an informal intervention. The learner is referred to the dean or dean designate within the school, who conducts a preliminary investigation. If the allegation has merit, the case is referred to the Faculty Review Panel (FRP) for a decision regarding the allegation. The FRP follows the procedure outlined in university policies and renders a decision. Possible sanctions include:
   • The learner is placed on academic probation for a minimum of two quarters.
   • The learner is required to write a scholarly paper on the relevance of the university’s Academic Honesty Policy to the learner’s actions.
   • The learner may be required to enroll in a writing course as a prerequisite for taking further courses.
   • The learner may be disenrolled from the university for subsequent violations of the Academic Honesty Policy.

Capella Online Writing Center Resources

To assist learners in improving their academic integrity skills, the Capella Online Writing Center offers a variety of resources. Again, your most important resource is to ask questions of your instructors, colleagues and peers, and your tutors at Smarthinking. We are all a part of the same academic community, so feel comfortable in knowing that your questions are welcome and valid.

The Capella Online Writing Center (COWC) provides a number of modules and tutorials to help you to learn the best practices of academic integrity. You will review two of those modules in a moment, but we strongly encourage you to explore the many resources offered at the COWC: they are a rich source of learning for doctoral learners. Your faculty can tell you that a large proportion of the learners who fail the Comprehensive Examination have also failed to take advantage of the resources of the COWC. Do not be one of them!

Connecting Academic Integrity to Capella Policies

Before moving on in the document, to obtain more information on the details of academic integrity as defined in this session and as explored in the activities, view the following modules on academic honesty and integrity.

• Academic Honesty.
• Academic Integrity.

Viewing the modules is required. Exploring the Online Writing Center is optional, but highly recommended. When you have finished reviewing the two modules, return to this document.

• Academic Honesty. Although there are many styles of, and formats for, academic writing, they all have something in common: they communicate new and emerging knowledge in a discipline by building upon knowledge that has been established previously. The previously established knowledge must be recognized and credited through proper citations and references of the sources. Acknowledging sources in this way is one of the most important things academic writers—at all levels—do. Recognizing others' contributions is more than just an academic convention; it shows respect for the full academic community by connecting readers and writers to the web of knowledge.
  
  In addition, acknowledging your sources accurately and appropriately will help you present your ideas and original statements in your own voice, distinguishing your argument from the arguments made by others. When you cite others, it should most often be to provide the evidence, context, and counterpoints that support your argument.
  
  The Academic Honesty module is designed to enhance your understanding of the role of academic honesty in academic writing as well as within the larger academic community. It provides guidelines for establishing good habits while conducting library research, while taking notes on what you read, and when using those sources in your own writing—habits that will help you adhere to the conventions of academic honesty and avoid plagiarism in your writing.
• Academic Integrity. Simply put, academic writing is grounded in cited evidence. At Capella, we are proud of our academic writing standards. Fluency in those standards will help you to generate research that will be well received by your field. There are two main expectations in regard to academic integrity:
  1. All work must be original. In other words, it must be the sole work of the author.
  2. All work must be cited in APA format and capable of standing up to the most stringent faculty or peer review.
  To assist you in acquiring the skills necessary to join and publish in this valuable genre, Capella offers many resources to help you adhere to best practices in academic integrity. This module explores some of these resources.
  
  In academic writing, a writer makes a statement that defines his or her position on a topic. That statement is supported by cited evidence. The writer then interprets that evidence in the context of the original statement. This series of steps constitutes the basic format of the academic paragraph. In the Writing Center, you will see this referred to as the MEAL plan. Each letter represents a step in the process: main idea, evidence or examples, analysis, and a link to something else in the paper.
  
  This paragraph structure reflects the writer's critical thinking process. To construct paragraphs in this genre, writers must make choices about what to read; what to summarize, paraphrase, or quote; and how to interpret those cited sources.
  
  In an effort to help develop your critical thinking skills for making these choices in your academic writing, the Writing Center offers a module on academic integrity that details salient methods for making academic choices. In the module, you will find a general overview of our resources, along with links to three important resources you should review: the APA Style and Formatting tutorial, the Academic Honesty Web site, and the APA: Finding Answers tutorial.

In addition to the resources available in the Writing Center, Capella offers a source matching tool called Turnitin that you can access from your courseroom home page.

Turnitin compares the text in your document to those found on the Internet, as well as to a series of industry-leading databases which include periodicals, papers previously submitted by Turnitin users, and papers submitted to the Capella repository.

Turnitin provides a report identifying matching text that it finds as well as the source it has located. This can assist in verifying that you have cited any source material that you have used. A key thing to note is that the Turnitin source matching tool is not a plagiarism detection tool. It can only verify whether your text matches other sources. If you have cited information correctly, it may be perfectly appropriate to have the text match. You, as the writer, have to interpret the report to determine whether your work would be seen as plagiarism because the matching sources are not cited appropriately. You can then revise your writing to include missing attributions, to improve your paraphrasing of source materials, and to make other changes to ensure that the paper you submit for grading is your own work.

As you submit your work to Turnitin, note that this tool is artificial intelligence; in other words, it cannot recognize that you—the author of your own submission—might submit a draft multiple times. Links are provided by Turnitin that allow you to note if you are submitting a draft or a final copy. Be sure to use the correct link when submitting a draft; otherwise, the second submission of the same draft will show up as a 100 percent match because Turnitin will recognize your writing as a document already submitted to the database.

Using Sources Properly

As you learned in the Academic Honesty and Academic Integrity modules, one of the ways to ensure academic integrity and honesty is by using your sources properly, and one of the ways to do that is by quoting them. There are three scholarly ways to use the ideas of other authors:

• Summarizing the words of the author.
• Paraphrasing the words of the author.
• Directly quoting the words of the author.

As you know, all three require fidelity to the meaning given by the author—taking an author's words out of context is as dishonest as plagiarizing him. And all three require full APA citation; indeed, when quoting directly you must add the page number to the author and year citation. It is a best practice, when evaluating research, to include the page number from which you took any ideas. APA encourages—but does not require—the use of page numbers when you are paraphrasing or summarizing as well (APA, 2010, p. 171).

Reference:

American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association. Washington, DC: Author.

Integrating Sources – Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Quoting

Before taking Self-Assessment 1: Academic Integrity, please review the Using Sources in Your Writing page in the Capella Online Writing Center. It includes information on using summaries, quotations, and paraphrases. You will need to be familiar with them in the Self-Assessment.

After reviewing all the material, complete the two discussion questions for this unit, found in the discussion area of the course room. Following that, complete the Unit 1 Academic Integrity Self-Assessment quiz.

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