Writing a Professional E-Mail/Thinking about Academic Integrity
Please take the time to review the following items before completing this assignment:
- E-Mail Message Guidelines
- Who are you?
- Why are you writing?
- Supporting explanation?
- What outcome do you hope for? Do you need to receive a response?
- Capstone Creed and UA Academic Honor Code
- The additional Academic Integrity statements included below
Two academic integrity or honor code statements from other schools:
University Library, U Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
“Academic integrity means honesty and responsibility in scholarship. Students and faculty alike must obey rules of honest scholarship, which means that all academic work should result from an individual’s own efforts. Intellectual contributions from others must be consistently and responsibly acknowledged. Academic work completed in any other way is fraudulent.”
Honor Code Pledge, Kennesaw State U
“As a member of the Kennesaw State University community of scholars, I understand that my actions are not only a reflection on myself, but also a reflection on the University and the larger body of scholars of which it is a part. Acting unethically, no matter how minor the offense, will be detrimental to my academic progress and self-image. It will also adversely affect all students, faculty, staff, the reputation of this University, and the value of the degrees it awards. Whether on campus or online, I understand that it is not only my personal responsibility, but also a duty to the entire KSU community that I act in a manner consistent with the highest level of academic integrity. Therefore, I promise that as a member of the Kennesaw State University community, I will not participate in any form of academic misconduct.”
Assignment
Send your instructor an e-mail introducing yourself and explaining what academic integrity is, what it means to you, and how it will affect your performance in this class. Your instructor’s e-mail address is on the course syllabus.
Due before next class.
Download sample assignment as a printable PDF.
Samples of Patchwriting
Patchwriting is FAILED paraphrasing. It’s when students just patch over a source text with a few synonyms or merely reverse the order of certain elements in a sentence or paragraph, leaving the original largely intact though slightly altered. Many students claim that this is how they learned to paraphrase in high school. So, if you include source-based writing in your class, you may need to show them what patchwriting IS, so that they can avoid it in their researched writing.
Educator Examples ONLY. Please DO NOT SHARE the examples on this handout with students. Instead, create your own, using course-specific examples.
Sample 1
Source Text: “What U. S. Tourism Means for Cuba” by Ron Claiborne & John Bentley (abcnews.go.com)
“I’ve stood there while the Cuban guide tells his British group, ‘I know why you’re all here, we’re all here to see it before the Americans ruin everything,’ and everybody says yeah, absolutely, so it’s kind of become a joke, but it’s true,” says Tony Pandola, a tour guide from California who’s been leading tours in Cuba for the past four years. “The ad nauseum thing you hear from anyone that you ask why you came to Cuba and why they came now, is ‘I want to see it before it changes,’ So everyone is aware that things are changing and they want to see this last vestige of some period, whether it was the Cold War or the Castro regime. The whole world has its eyes on Cuba and they want to see it.”
Student Writing (Patchwriting): A Cuban tour guide jokes with his British group that he knows why they are all here and it’s to see Cuba before Americans ruin it. People are coming from all over because they want to see Cuba before it all changes. Everyone has become aware that Cuba is going through a change and people want to see that remnants of periods like the Cold War or the Castro Regime before they’re gone. Everyone is watching Cuba to see how this change will affect their culture. [maintains most of the original vocabulary and the original sentence structure. NOTE: writing style (word choices, sentence structure, voice) is part of an author’s intellectual property and should NOT be maintained in a proper paraphrase.
Sample 2
Source Text: Claiborne & Bentley
Suddenly, Cuba is one of the hottest destinations on the planet. Ever since the U.S government eased some of the travel restrictions for Americans travelling to Cuba, and President Obama became the first U. S. president to visit the country in over 80 years, Americans have been flocking to the island. The number of Americans visiting Cuba nearly doubled in the first four months of 2016 over last year at the same time, according to the Cuban government, with more than 94,000 Americans visiting from January to May of this year.
Student Writing (Patchwriting): Cuba has become one of the hottest destinations for people to visit. Tourists have flocked there ever since the American government has lifted some of the restrictions on traveling to Cuba. According to the article, “The number of Americans visiting Cuba nearly doubled in the first four months of 2016 over last year.” In fact, President Obama was the first U.S. president to visit the island inmore than 80 years. [maintains sentence structure, though sometimes inverted and sometimes with order of sentences scrambled]
Download patchwriting handout as a printable PDF.
A&S Academic Integrity Refresher Tutorials
Consider asking your students to take a free refresher tutorial!
The College of Arts & Sciences offers workshops to help students develop academic writing skills and understand ethical research practices.
Basic Source-Based Writing Skills
The Basic Source-Based Writing Skills Workshop is a hands-on and interactive refresher on using sources. These two-hour workshops cover student research; ethical and strategic use of sources; summarizing, quoting, and paraphrasing; and how to cite sources both internally and in a Works Cited list in order to avoid plagiarism. Currently, they are being offered remotely. See below.
Interactive Tutorials
Interactive PowerPoint Refresher Tutorials are available on-demand. Simply have a student contact Professor Jessica Kidd at kidd005@ua.edu to ask about receiving work-at-your-own-pace workshop materials via email. Each tutorial contains embedded practice activities for students to complete along the way.
Part One: consists of two non-themed tutorials on “What is Academic Integrity?” and “Can I Use Wikipedia?” These two tutorials will take about 30 minutes to complete, together.
Part Two: a themed tutorial on “Annotation,” a study skill that shows students how to take notes as they read (because often struggles with reading comprehension and poor note-taking habits can lead to poor decisions about source usage). This tutorial will take about 30 minutes to complete.
Part Three: a themed tutorial on “Avoiding Plagiarism,” consisting of lessons on how to correctly and ethically summarize, paraphrase, and quote from source materials (including how not to patchwrite) and how to cite and document sources. This tutorial will take about 1 hours to complete.
Available themes:
- Hurricanes
- The Great Depression
- Pro Athletes
- Reading and Writing about Literature
- Taxidermy
- Woman Suffrage
- Epidemics
