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Full policy

John Cabot University

Student Responsibility and Academic Integrity Pledge

The academic community is founded on a belief in the free and respectful exchange of ideas.

An integral part of this free exchange is recognition of the intellectual work of others and honest representation of one’s own. All members of the John Cabot University community are expected to maintain the highest standards of academic honesty in all aspects of the University’s academic programs.

Related to this, all members of the JCU community are expected to respect the intellectual property and the privacy rights of others. This includes the instructor’s right to intellectual property in his or her lectures, notes, slides, and other course-specific materials, and the rights to limit distribution of images and recordings of oneself.

Also indispensable to the free exchange of ideas is respect for the privacy of the instructors and fellow-students engaged in any discussion. The liberal arts classroom is a privileged space for taking intellectual risks, which may involve expressing provisional opinions or playing the devil’s advocate. To protect this privileged space, every participant must know that opinions and materials shared with others, in any form, will not be broadcast or distributed to a larger audience.

For these reasons, students undertake to respect the following norms, grounded in John Cabot University’s Academic Policies and Community Standards:

On my honor, by accepting this policy and entering Moodle, I affirm that:

• I will not copy, record, produce screenshots of, reproduce, share, repost, or distribute in any way, any of the materials from my JCU courses (both in the classroom and accessed remotely); this also includes any other course materials, including take-home exams, distributed by my instructors. 
• All of the work submitted online or in class will be my own. I will not receive or offer any unauthorized help to other students while completing any exam or assignment, and I will not use any materials or devices prohibited by my instructor for any exercise, assignment, or examination.
• I understand that I must follow all of the instructions provided by my individual professors regarding academic honesty and integrity; these requirements may include instructions on individual quizzes and exams, instructions on individual assignments, and the prohibition of the use of technology during class, while taking quizzes, exams, and while completing assignments in or out of the classroom. 
• I understand that the usage of and access to the content uploaded on Moodle is restricted to the legitimate users of the platform, and only for individual educational purposes. I acknowledge that any other usage of said content – including its distribution under any way, shape or form outside of Moodle – which might be prejudicial to copyright owners and/or holders is forbidden.
• I will not upload to Moodle any type of text, document, image, and other types of materials protected by copyright, unless said materials are in the public domain or published under an open license allowing their distribution. Copyrighted materials include:
  • Works and materials held or made available by the Frohring Library, including scans of said works and materials
  • Works and materials made available on sharing platforms, such as Academica.edu or ResearchGate
  • Photos and images of cultural assets owned by or under the care of third parties, including public, private and/or foreign institutions, unless a license is issued by said institutions
  • Works and materials of which I am the author or creator, if their uploading constitutes a breach of a publishing contract, including scans of said works and materials
  • Photos and images taken by third parties, unless they are low-resolution, and the authors/creators are referenced
• I acknowledge that non-compliance with the two previous points constitutes a violation of the Italian copyright law.
• I understand that any violation of these pledges is subject to academic penalties and disciplinary action at the university as well as legal and civil penalties.

JCU Academic Integrity

The academic community is founded on a belief in the free exchange of ideas. An integral part of this free exchange is recognition of the intellectual work of others, and respect for the instructor and fellow students. All members of the John Cabot community are expected to maintain the highest standards of academic integrity in all aspects of the University’s academic programs.

Definition

Academic dishonesty is taking credit for academic work (including papers, reports, quizzes, examinations, etc.) that is not one's own or has not been originally produced for the course in which it has been submitted. Knowingly assisting another student in submitting work not their own may also constitute academic dishonesty.

One form of academic dishonesty is plagiarism, which includes direct copying, as well as any use of another's ideas, words or created product, without properly crediting the source. Plagiarism can be deliberate or accidental; students are responsible for ensuring that any work submitted with their name on it is properly referenced.

Although individual instructors may suggest their own guidelines for avoiding plagiarism in papers and reports, the following rules should generally be observed:

a. Any sequence of words appearing in a student essay or report that does not originate from the student should be enclosed in quotation marks, and its source fully and accurately identified in a note or in the text. Great care must be taken that quoted material is quoted accurately.

b. A paraphrase should not be enclosed in quotation marks but should be marked using a proper bibliographic reference.

c. An interpretation or idea based on a book or other source of information should be identified via a bibliographic reference.

Another form of academic dishonesty is cheating, which includes giving or receiving assistance on a quiz, examination, or other assignments in any way not specifically authorized by the instructor. Cheating also includes the unauthorized possession or use of calculators, notes, formulas, dictionaries, tables, graphs, charts, or other memory aids on a quiz or examination. Students are responsible for making sure that all unauthorized materials are completely put away, and may be sanctioned for mere negligence in appearing to possess unauthorized materials.

A third form of academic dishonesty consists of submitting the same work in more than one course, without the explicit approval of both instructors. This includes courses with the same code (like different sections of EN 110), so that a student who is retaking a course may not submit the same work in a subsequent semester.

The most egregious form of academic dishonesty consists in paying a third party to prepare work that is submitted for academic credit in a student’s name, which can only be done with a specific fraudulent intention.

Penalties

A student who commits an act of academic dishonesty will generally receive a reduced, if not failing, grade on the work in which the dishonesty occurred. Severe acts of academic dishonesty may result in the student also receiving a failing grade in the course. 

Instructors must report material instances of academic dishonesty to the Dean of Academic Affairs.

A student who is reported twice for material acts of plagiarism, cheating or double-submissions is subject to dismissal from the University. Students found to have paid third-parties for their work do not get a second chance, and will be subject to immediate dismissal on the basic of that act alone. In these cases, the Dean will ask the Academic Council to make a recommendation to the President, who will make the final decision.

Appeals

A student may appeal an instructor’s determination of academic dishonesty by submitting a written statement to the Dean, setting forth the relevant facts and interpretations.  The statement must be received by the Dean within seven working days of when the student is called to meet with the Dean. The instructor will be given a copy of the student’s statement, and the chance to respond to it.

The Dean will review the various submissions and make a decision. If this appeal is not resolved to the student’s satisfaction, s/he may ask the Dean to refer the matter to the Academic Council. When an academic honesty determination is resolved in the student’s favor, the Dean will delete the report of academic dishonesty, and direct the instructor to grade the disputed material on its merits.

Full policy

To provide course content to students who access their courses remotely, John Cabot University has installed cameras and microphones in all its classrooms.  At times professors will need to record individual class meetings. During these class meetings the voices and images of students in the classroom or attending the class remotely may be recorded.  Any recordings made during classes will not be shared by the professor to anyone outside the class and students in the class are prohibited from downloading, capturing, and sharing in any way recorded classes.  Violation of these restrictions can lead to serious civil, criminal, and/or university sanctions.  By continuing, I affirm that I understand that my voice and image may be recorded during class and that I will not download, capture, share, or distribute in any way, in their entirety or in part, the recordings of my JCU classes.