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The University of Massachusetts Amherst
Libraries Ask Us

CICS Academic Honesty

Guiding Questions

For each scenario, consider: 

  • What is the broader context for this situation? 
  • What are the ethical issues presented in the situation?
  • Are the students' behaviors honest? 
  • What would you do in each situation?  

Consider Each Scenario

Sameer, Jose, Brittany and Dorna have all been assigned a group project for their International Studies class. They are asked to write a 10 page paper.  For a variety of reasons, the students have left the paper until the very end.  The paper is due in 2 days and almost no work has been done.

The four students have different ideas on how to proceed:

  • Sameer did a paper on a similar topic last semester.  He offers to email the previous paper to all and have them mark that paper up.
  • Jose suggests everyone take one section and each work on that.  His contribution is to offer to pull all the sections together, summarize the results and write the final conclusions by himself. Time is really short, so he will send the paper in to the professor himself.
  • Brittany is having a small family emergency right now and has shared her problems with the group.  She feels like she can’t spend the time right now on the paper.  The group offers to include her name on the paper when submitted and Brittany promises to carry more of the weight next time.
  • Dorna is frustrated with the group. She’s worked with these people before and feels their work is sub-par. She is concerned about getting into grad school and would rather do the paper herself as she knows she will get a better grade.  She offers to do just that and put everyone’s name on it.

Adapted from: DiMenna-Nyselius Library staff, Fairfield University,  Dec. 2009 

In this scenario, you will look at three sets of journalistic writing to evaluate whether plagiarism occurred and how it could have been avoided. After you read each set of journalistic pieces, compare the original journalism to the more recent journalism. Identify any instances of plagiarism in the more recent journalism and explain how that plagiarism could be avoided. The earlier journalism is on the left and the more recent journalism is on the right (also, see dates at the beginning of each journalistic piece). 

Alyssa and Mateo sit next to each other with their laptops while working on a problem set. They talk in general terms about different approaches to doing the problem set. They draw diagrams on the whiteboard. When Alyssa discovers a useful class in the Java library, she mentions it to Mateo. When Mateo finds a StackOverflow answer that helps, he sends the URL to Alyssa. As they type lines of code, they speak the code aloud to the other person, to make sure both people have the right code. In a tricky part of the problem set, Alyssa and Mateo look at each other’s screens and compare them so that they can get their code right.

Their instructor's syllabus has indicated that collaboration is allowed, but copying is not.

Adapted from: https://integrity.mit.edu/handbook/writing-code