Faculty Voices: Why Is Academic Integrity Important?

Visual: Video opens to the opening title with the video series title, Faculty Voices: Walden Talks Writing, then the title, “Why is academic integrity important?”

 

Visual: The screen changes to show each speaker talking to the camera in their home offices. Each person’s name and college is listed as they speak.

Audio:

Dr. Catherine Kelly, Office of Academic Support: Writing with academic integrity is especially important because it allows you to contribute your own voice and understanding about the topic, and it's basically, you're contributing to the field. And to contribute to the field, you need to provide credit to previous sources and also synthesize your own voice. And academic integrity is important to allow for that and to ensure accountability and credibility in your work.

Dr. Kim Critchlow, College of Management and Technology: Students need to be very cognizant of how they then maintain their academic integrity. For example, it's important that they work independently and that which they write are their own words, their own thoughts. Oftentimes their thoughts might derive from another author's ideology or their ideas, and so then it's important for them to cite the source. And then, lastly, I would say that in order to maintain academic integrity, ensure that when the research is performed, and there’s a report out on what has been researched, that the reporting of the research is accurate. That’s academic integrity.

Dr. Darci Harland, Riley College of Education and Leadership: I believe academic integrity is important skill for academics because, I don't know, do you remember that old game of telephone where you have everybody line up in a row and the first person starts by saying a sentence and then they have to whisper it to the people down the line and then how funny it was at the end when that last person had to describe what they think that first person said and it's never even close? So that's a fun little game, but if we don't take our academic integrity issues seriously, that's what happens: Our publications could become just a bad game of telephone. And so, it's very, very important that doctoral level students must read those primary sources. You can't just depend on others to do that for you, and it's a skill that we really highly need academics to have.

Dr. Gregory Campbell, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences: Integrity is what a student does when doing the right thing when no one else is watching. So it's really about a student honoring themselves, doing what they know is right, even when no one else is looking.

Dr. Allyson Wattley Gee, College of Management and Technology: It's so important to teach people how critical it is to not copy the works of others. I know that's such a basic understanding of academic integrity, but it's all about being ethical and legal in everything that you do. And, and to be appropriate in your writing and your visuals and anything that you're sharing with others. If it is not original work, whose work is it? And would you want someone to take your work and pass it off as their own original ideas? No. Even in the music industry, for all of those who love music and whether it's rap, hip-hop, rock, whatever it is, you know of many performers who have gotten into a lot of trouble legal trouble that has cost them millions of dollars because they stole a song from someone else. So academic integrity is integrity not just, I think, for the academic world, but I think it just relates to integrity for you as an individual in everything that you do.

Visual: The video ends with the closing title with the video series title, Faculty Voices: Walden Talks Writing and the Writing Center’s e-mail address: writingsupport@mail.waldenu.edu.