Classroom and School Honesty Policy:

Be honest with yourself -

In general, our society seems to accept and sometimes even condone cheating. It is a common behavior. Sometimes people give it fancy names like 'scamming', 'collaborating', 'helping', or 'Ponzi'. Many people feel that if they walk away with more than they deserved, then it was worth it, regardless of who got the short end of the deal.

I personally want students to work together on their assignments and labs. Collaboration is one of the goals! But there is a fine line between working together and copying someone else's work.

None of these factors make cheating the right thing to do. Cheating is getting something you don't deserve. There are several ways in the classroom that this can happen.

1. A student may copy answers or lab results for activities they never did from another student. This is known as collusion. If a student is caught doing this, they will be given a zero for the assignment, as will the student who supplied the answers.
2. A student may copy verbatim from a source like the internet, a book, or another student's summary, without recognizing the source. This is known as plagiarism. If a student is caught doing this, they will be given a zero on the affected assignment.
3. A student may copy test answers from another student, or write unauthorized notes on the table beforehand, or bring forbidden notes into an exam and copy them. I want to know how much you know when I test you, not how good your eyesight is. Any students caught doing this will be given a zero on the test.
4. A student may write down answers as an assignment is being graded and then claim that they were done previously. Any students caught doing this will be given a zero on the affected assignment.

As you can see in all four of these cases, the student involved was attempting to get something they did not deserve.

In this class, cheating will not be tolerated. No one ever learned anything by cheating. No one ever improved themselves as a person by dishonesty. I urge you to prepare as well as possible for each challenge in class; then do your best on every task and walk away happy with the credit you earned! If your grade is not as high as you want it to be after your best effort, come and talk to me; I can help.