Week 10: Writing with integrity I
Overview
As an undergraduate student, it is critical that you have a strong understanding of academic integrity and how this core scholarly value must inform your work.
Scholarly communities in higher education institutions (including Canadian universities) share some common ideas and principles that define academic integrity. However, each institution will have its own set of policies and procedures for enforcing academic integrity and responding to violations of these principles.
This week, we define academic integrity and introduce writing strategies that will enable you to ensure that you write with integrity.
For example, a central tenet or principle of academic integrity is that we credit the ideas and words of others, i.e., we provide proper attribution for the work of others.
When we do not properly attribute or cite the works of others, we plagiarize.
There are several major strategies to avoid plagiarism in our work:
- Citing
- Paraphrasing
- Summarizing
These strategies require the use of a citation style, such as APA or MLA, to properly attribute the ideas and words of other authors.
In addition, we must also properly structure our writing so that our own ideas and those we have borrowed from other scholars, are clearly articulated. When we write clearly, the reader can easily identify our ideas and those of other scholars.
It takes practice to learn and apply these strategies well and they are critical to academic success.
Readings
Section I: Writing with integrity
Booth, W. C., Colomb, G. G., Williams, J. M., Bizup, J., & Fitzgerald, W. T. (2016). The craft of research (4th ed.). University of Chicago Press.
- Chapter 8: Making claims (pp. 122-131)
- Chapter 9: Assembling reasons and evidence (pp. 132-140).
Bullock, R. (2021). The Norton field guide to writing. W.W. Norton & Company.
- Chapter 51: Quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing (pp. 531-534).
Graff, G., & Birkenstein, C. (2021). “They say/I Say”. The moves that matter in academic writing (5th ed.). W.W. Norton & Company.
- Chapter 1: They say: Starting with what others are saying (pp. 19-31)
- Chapter 3: “As he himself puts it”: The art of quoting (pp. 47-56).
QUT Library. (2015, September 3). How to paraphrase [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/SObGEcok06U (6:37 minutes).
Before class activities
Key questions to ask while reading and watching
- What is a claim and how does it relate to your research question?
- What are the key differences between quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing the ideas of others?
- How could a writing template help you properly recognize and cite the ideas of other scholars?
“Pile of words”: Group and label key concepts
Organize into three lists of similar terms and label each list (include definition of each label).
Remember: You may already understand some of these ideas relatively well and others may be new to you—you are encouraged to look up (e.g., in a dictionary or encyclopedia) the unfamiliar concepts in order to create your lists.
Make note of your reasons for grouping the ideas together as you will share them in class. These are self-paced individual activities, for which there are no right or wrong answers. The instructor will not grade this work.
Predict a learning outcome
After class activities
After class, annotate each reading for key ideas. For videos and podcasts, you can annotate the transcript.
Summarize the author’s key ideas from each reading.
Highlight the following information:
- Purpose of the reading;
- Scope (the extent of the study);
- Thesis (the main argument[s]);
- Method (research method if applicable);
- Outcome(s) and conclusion.
Respond to the following statement about the readings: do you agree or disagree with the statement and why?
“Plagiarism is theft, but of more than words. By not acknowledging a source, the plagiarist steals the modest recognition that honest researchers should receive, the respect that a researcher spends a lifetime struggling to earn. And that weakens the community as a whole, by reducing the value of research to those who follow” (Booth et al., 2016, p. 273).
Did this reading provide any inspiration or insights you can use in this or any of your other classes? If yes, what is the inspiration and/or what are the insights?
