Introduction: Learning about Academic Integrity

In this brief introduction, we want to explain why you should work to avoid plagiarism. It may feel as if papers, exams, and lab reports are meant primarily to measure how much you’ve learned. But they are also the very medium of learning, the means through which we expect you to develop a broadly based, highly disciplined intelligence. Professors don’t assign papers merely to see if you understand the course material; we expect that you will develop this understanding in the very act of writing your papers. So if you take shortcuts in this process, you give up one of the most powerful avenues to intellectual growth. Yale College takes plagiarism seriously in large part because of our obligation to educate you.

You should also realize that plagiarism profoundly upsets your professors, for it destroys the trust that is essential to any cooperative relationship. They work hard to be good teachers; many of them spend hours providing detailed feedback on essays. They do that to help you learn to think more clearly, to express yourself convincingly, to develop your intellectual power, and to increase your ability to understand the world. They also do it because they value you, they value your ideas, and they think the world will be a better place if you can think clearly and behave intelligently. Later, some of you will be leaders with important positions. Your professors want you to be competent and honest, for they have seen too often what terrible can things can happen when leaders are incompetent and dishonest. They also want you to create value in your lives, whatever you end up doing, and you cannot do that if you deceive—quite the opposite.

All beginning scholars struggle to articulate a point of view among all the other writers discussing a topic. Learning more about plagiarism and the proper use of sources will help you in moments of doubt.

This questionnaire is not the only source for learning more about these issues. The Writing Center website has extensive discussions about using sources. The Writing Center also provides Writing Partners and Residential College Writing Tutors who can talk to you about how and when to cite. Finally and most importantly, professors will teach you about the conventions for using sources in the various academic fields. Developing this knowledge will help you avoid the serious consequences of plagiarism—which include failing grades and possible suspension or expulsion from Yale. But even more importantly, this knowledge will support you as you develop your own voice as a scholar, leading you towards the deep satisfaction that comes from developing your own ideas in a healthy relationship to past knowledge.

Directions

Following this screen are ten multiple-choice questions about using sources and avoiding plagiarism. You must choose a single answer for each question; you will then see a screen that gives the correct answer and discusses the reasons for it. After you read the discussion, you may move on to the next question. Although you must complete all ten questions, you will not receive a grade. We’ve used a quiz format, but the questions are designed to help you learn rather than to test you.

If you’d like to read more about academic integrity and using sources before you tackle the questions, you may go to the Writing Center website. This link also appears at the end of the quiz, in case you decide then that you'd like to follow up on some of the issues.

It will take most students about 20 minutes to work through all 10 questions. Your session will time out after 60 minutes of inactivity.