Academic Dishonesty Policy

Academic Dishonesty Defined

James Sprunt Community College is committed to providing an academic environment conducive to learning. The college does not condone academic dishonesty to any degree. To ensure students understand the college’s expectations, definitions and examples of plagiarism, multiple submissions, and cheating are provided below. 

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined as presenting someone else’s work, including the work of other students, as one’s own. Students have plagiarized when they have failed to properly document the original ideas of others. Any ideas or wording taken from an original source for written or verbal use must be cited within the assignment.

Examples of possible resources may include: books, newspaper or magazine articles, course material, other students projects, email messages, and Internet resources including books, fine art, graphics, photographs, websites, video production, films, CDs design projects, compositions, lyrics, music, sound bites, speeches, audio recordings, lectures, interviews, etc. When you are in doubt about the need to cite information, ask your instructor.

Multiple submissions

This is defined as submission of work that has been prepared for a different course without fair citation of the original work and prior approval of the instructor. Students who submit assignments that were previously submitted in another course are subject to the same consequences they would face if they plagiarized these assignments. The use of one’s previous work in an assignment requires prior approval from the current faculty member and citation of the previous work.

Examples of multiple submissions include: submitting the same essay for credit in two courses without first receiving written permission; making minor revisions to an assignment that has already received credit in a course and submitting it in another class as if it were new.

Cheating

Cheating is defined as obtaining information in a dishonest manner. Some examples of cheating are: obtaining and using all or part of someone else’s work and turning it in as one’s own, allowing someone else to obtain and use your work, several people completing one assignment and submitting multiple copies represented (implicitly or explicitly) as individual work, submitting material(s) obtained from the Internet and/or World Wide Web as one’s own work without proper acknowledgement of the source, and letting a tutor complete and assignment and submitting it as one’s own.

Consequences

If a student commits any act of academic dishonesty, the instructor may assign a zero grade on the assignment or assign a grade of “F” in the course. The instructor must file an academic dishonesty incident report describing the alleged violation with the Vice President of Curriculum and provide a copy to the student.

The student may appeal the grade assigned by the instructor if (1) the student feels the penalty is unfair or (2) the student does not agree with the evidence presented by the instructor. Guidelines for student appeals are provided in the current James Sprunt Community College catalog.

Repeated offenses of the college’s academic dishonesty policy will result in the student being referred to the Vice President of Curriculum.