Academic integrity

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As you compose your essay, I offer pointers to guide you. After writing it, I encourage you to send to me for editing as a new posting and Special Request.

First of all, please add a strong hook or introduction to lure readers. Maybe start with a story about how one retains or loses academic integrity from a real life story or news event? You might also paint a fictional story of how a student cheats his way through college and graduate school and then lands a job, only to fail completely due to the lack of integrity after years of cheating and faking.

After creating your strong introduction to lure readers, I encourage you to formulate a strong thesis statement to serve as the game plan for your paper. You might articulate something like this generic model:
Academic integrity is an essential ingredient to achieving not only in higher education but also generally in life and embodies five inherent components: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility.

As you can see, if you make a multifaceted thesis, it allows each subsequent paragraph to follow as a result. Do you see what I mean?

After stating your thesis, you will need to add a strong transitional sentence to link ideas. Something like "First of all, it is important to define academic integrity" might work.

Although there is not a single, universal definition of academic integrity, many experts suggest that it involves "standing up for what is fundamental as well. In the case of academic integrity, it is standing up for the values that are fundamental to the academic process, even when it is difficult to do so" (http://ethics.sandiego.edu/eac/Summer2000/Readings/Principles.html).

Similarly, one ethics committee collaboratively defines it with five key elements: "honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility. Academic integrity, in our view, is the commitment to stand up for these five values, even in the face of adversity" (http://ethics.sandiego.edu/eac/Summer2000/Readings/Principles.html).

I encourage you to find strong definitions of academic integrity from a plethora of resources.
For examples, scholars from Penn State University suggest that it "includes a commitment by all members of the University community not to engage in or tolerate acts of falsification, misrepresentation or deception. Such acts of dishonesty violate the fundamental ethical principles of the University community and compromise the worth of work completed by others" (http://www.psu.edu/dept/ufs/policies/47-00.html#49-20).

Berube suggests that we can infer from the meaning of the two words "integrity" and "academic" that "a conceptual definition must include the adherence to an ethical code in the context of higher learning" (umuc.edu/distance/odell/cip/vail/faculty/AI_overview/ai_overview.pdf). However, Hinman's definition is much more simplistic: "Don't cheat" ...