Skip to Main Content

EDU 6180 - Understanding & Evaluating EDU Research: Ethical Use of Information

This course guide has been created to help you with locating resources for your research and to help locate data sets for Education

Ethically Use of Resources

Plagiarism Graphic


The fifth and final step in Information Literacy is to ethically use the resources you have gathered in your paper or project. This means that you need to correctly cite them both in the text of your paper and in your references, works cited, or bibliography.

Even though information, words, and ideas are not concrete, they still can be stolen by them not being cited and those who commit plagiarism get in trouble.

Ethical Use of Information

Ethical use of information means using information ethically. Clear as mud, eh? Actually there are two ways that very clearly deal with this concept. They are plagiarism and copyright. Both deal with giving credit where credit is due and using other people's work correctly. Even though information, words, and ideas are not concrete, they still can be stolen and those that do that can still get in trouble.

Plagiarism

According to The College of St. Scholastica's Academic Honesty Policy located in the Student Handbook,

"Academic dishonesty can include misrepresentation of the work of others as one's own; dishonesty in testing; violating authorized guidelines established by instructors for individual assignments; sabotaging or damaging the work of others; or engaging in dishonesty in other academic work."


The most common form of plagiarism when it comes to resources and research is misrepresentation of the work of others as one's own and using someone else's ideas or words without giving credit.

Cover of 2014-15 Student Handbook

Plagiarism and other academic dishonesty includes but is not limited to the following:

  1. Misrepresentation of the work of others as one's own
  2. Using someone else's ideas or words without giving credit
  3. Reusing work from another class without permission
  4. Falsification of data or quotes
  5. Giving or receiving unauthorized help on an assignment or test
  6. Dishonesty in testing
  7. Violating authorized guidelines established by instructors for individual assignments
  8. Sabotaging or damaging the work of others

At The College of St. Scholastica, academic dishonesty can result in failure of an assignment, a course, being denied admission to or dismissed from a department or program, exclusion from extracurricular activities, or expulsion from the College even on the first instance of academic dishonesty.

More information on academic honesty from the College's Student Affairs Academic Policies.

Turnitin

Turnitin Logo
At CSS, Turnitin is embedded in Brightspace, so faculty wishing to have students use Turnitin should get information from our Center for Instructional Design (CID).

Turnitin compares submitted papers to its database full of Internet sites, other papers, and online resources. It generates an originality report which can be used to check for plagiarism and to double check student's work.

Ethics in Research Methods & Data Usage in Education

In education, there are a number of issues that should be considered when working with data. Here are a number of resources to assist you with understanding the ethical issues surrounding the management and use of data:

 

Education Resources:

General Research Resources:

Copyright Video

This is a serious but humorous explanation of copyright.

)

AARC Plagiarism Video