College of Management: Academic Integrity Workshop

What is Intellectual Property?

The World Intellectual Property Organization, defines intellectual property as,  “creations of the mind, such as inventions; literary and artistic works; designs; and symbols, names and images used in commerce.”

According to the Encyclopedia of Law and Higher Education, "Intellectual property includes literary or artistic works, inventions, business methods, industrial processes, logos, and product designs. Nearly every activity engaged in by students, staff, and faculty in colleges and universities involves the production or use of intellectual property. Among the activities involving intellectual property are research projects, books, journal articles, musical compositions, lesson plans, student assignments, speeches and lectures, videos, university Web sites, newspapers, reports, concerts, and plays."

Intellectual property violations in research include:

• Not receiving permission to use the intellectual work produced by others
• Course assignments and exams are intellectual property and cannot be shared or posted without the permission of the instructor

According to the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary plagiarism is “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own.”

Plagiarism also means:

• submitting exam answers or papers from paid websites such as Chegg is plagiarism if the work is not cited
• submitting someone else's work (in whole, part, or paraphrase) as one's own without fully and properly crediting the author
• submitting as one's original work materials obtained from an individual or an online source
• submitting as one's own original work material that has been produced through unacknowledged collaboration with others

Cheating in academics, according to the Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology, are “actions on the part of students that violate the explicit rules or commonly accepted norms for examinations or assignments."

The Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology further defines cheating as: “Any intentional action or behavior that: violates the established rules governing the administration of a test or the completion of an assignment; cheating gives one student an unfair advantage over other students on a test or an assignment and decreases the accuracy of the intended inferences arising from a student's performance on a test or an assignment.”

Cheating encompasses these actions:

• Buying essays, papers, or exam answers from websites and turning them in as your own
• Using internet resources and not citing the information
• Submitting written assignments that have been substantially edited by others is over-editing. This means the content has been edited so much that it's no longer "your voice"
• Lifting code from the internet
• Providing misleading information
• Falsifying documents
• “Clicking in” other students into classes or online forums
• Misrepresenting yourself online or in face-to-face situations
• Having another person take placement tests for you

Online cheating is another form of plagiarism and includes:

• Cutting and pasting someone else's Web work and submitting it as your own
• Buying or downloading essays, papers, speeches etc. from the Web and turning them in as your own
• Using a device, phone or web conferencing tool such as Zoom during an exam 
• Collaborating with others online during an exam
• Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools such as CHATGPT for assignments or test taking