What is academic integrity? In general terms, this phrase describes the act of making ethical choices in your intellectual work. As Dr. Parnaby describes in the video below, you can break down the terms this way:

• Academic = intellectual work
• Integrity = acting in an honest and truthful manner and taking responsibility for the choices you make

As students are responsible for understanding and upholding the standards of academic integrity.  Pursuing your studies with integrity ensures that your education has meaning — in other words, that it accurately reflects your skills, knowledge, and abilities.

Originality

Ensure that your work is rooted in your own intellectual efforts.
A central purpose of the academic enterprise is to extend our own abilities and broaden our perspectives. No one’s work can be said to be wholly unique or original; however, learning and development requires that individuals create work that originates from their own thoughts and efforts. In this way we do not simply reproduce the work of others; instead, we create new understandings, re-conceive existing concepts, and challenge long-accepted ideas. These efforts towards discovery lead to the growth and refinement of the collective knowledge of humanity.

Integrity

Honestly represent your own work and respect the ideas, knowledge, and work of others.
All legitimate academic work represents honestly and scrupulously, to the best of the scholar’s ability, the results of their study and creativity. Even the most novel scholarship borrows from, is inspired by, and reacts to the work of others. Thus, a core principle of academic life is to fully acknowledge the work of others when it has guided and informed one’s own.

Attributes

The chapter is an adaptation of 1.1 Academic Integrity: An Introduction   by Donnie Calabrese; Emma Russell; Jasmine Hoover; and Tammy Byrne and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. You can download this book free at Academic Integrity Handbook Copyright © 2020.

This chapter also includes an adaptation of 1.2 CBU’s Chater of Academic Citizenship by Donnie Calabrese; Emma Russell; Jasmine Hoover; and Tammy Byrne and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. You can download this book free at Academic Integrity Handbook Copyright © 2020.