Definitions: Cheating, plagiarism

The LS&A Joint Faculty-Student Policy Committee recommends the College use the following definitions of cheating.

Cheating is committing fraud on a record, report, paper, computer assignment, examination or other work or other course requirement (adapted from Duke University).

Examples include:

  • Using unauthorized notes, study aids or information from another student or student’s paper on an examination or any other course requirement, including giving or receiving assistance from another student without the instructor’s permission.

  • Altering a graded work after it has been returned and then submitting the work for re-grading.

  • Allowing another person to do one’s work and to submit the work under one’s own name.

  • Submitting two copies of the same or nearly similar papers to two professors without prior approval (adapted from Duke).

  • Fabricating data in support of laboratory or field work (from Cornell University).

    Plagiarism is taking someone else’s ideas, words or statements or other works as one’s own without proper acknowledgment.

    Examples include:

  • Word-for-word plagiarism—copying exactly from someone else’s text (from Cornell University).

  • Section-by-section plagiarism—lifting phrases from someone else’s text (from Cornell).

  • Select-term plagiarism—lifting a special term from a text not one’s own (from Cornell).

  • Paraphrasing—using someone else’s ideas as if they were one’s own thoughts (from Cornell).

  • Borrowing facts, statistics and other illustrative material unless the information is common knowledge (from Indiana University).

    The committee recommends the following guidelines regarding take-home exams and computers:

  • A student must not collaborate with other persons on a particular project and submit a copy of a written report or other project, which is represented explicitly or implicitly as the student’s own individual work.

  • Students may not submit as their own work a computer program or part thereof that is not the result of their own thought and efforts. Contributions to a program from external sources must be acknowledged and properly documented (from U-M College of Engineering).

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