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Writing Program Student Policies

Credit for Writing Courses

Comparable Credit

Special Credit for W131 - on the basis of a portfolio of student writing

Credit by Examination - on the basis of examination (CLEP, DANTES, AP, SAT/ACT)

Course credit for transfer students

Transferring from IU-Bloomington and fulfilling the Elementary Composition I (W131) requirement at IUPUI

Ethics and Writing

Ethics and Plagiarism

Complaints and Questions

Contesting Grades and Other Student Complaints

Introductory Writing Student Complaint Form

Ethics and Writing

Ethics and Plagiarism

One of the goals of IUPUI’s introductory writing courses is to introduce students to strategies for and expectations about identifying, evaluating, and integrating source material into written work. Classmates, friends, and teachers may offer advice or reactions that help to shape writing and thinking. Published writers similarly influence writers, both in terms of ideas, style, and form. As students move through their writing courses, they should become more skilled at acknowledging both types of influence.

Each core writing course has a textbook with sections on adapting source use to writing, avoiding plagiarism, notetaking, and citing conventions. Citing sources is a technical issue (involving guidelines for format and punctuation), but more importantly a rhetorical issue (involving matters of ethics, persona, and credibility).

The information below raises important issues for students to consider, while respecting institutional and program guidelines about plagiarism and acknowledging sources.

Acknowledgments and Credibility

Writers handle others’ ideas in almost every type of writing, even the most personal and reflective (since other texts or people often influence what and how we remember). Students deal with this element of writing by acknowledging the influences on their texts by identifying what texts or people affected the composition process. Such acknowledgments offer readers valuable information that helps them judge a writer’s credibility and the soundness of conclusions. Acknowledgements of important texts allow readers to look up further information on a subject, should they be so inclined. The prefaces, footnotes, parenthetical notations, and bibliographies in published works can be a valuable resource for any researcher.

Plagiarism: Using and Citing Sources

Plagiarism, the term generally applied to violations of academic expectations about citing sources, can range from cheating to incomplete source documentation. The Indiana University Code of Student Rights and Responsibilities provides a fuller explanation of plagiarism and institutional penalties. The information below separates cheating, or fraud, from issues of plagiarism. The actions and consequences are described below and summarized in a table at the end of this section.

• Cheating or Fraud. If students turn in work that was written by someone else—work which was bought, borrowed, stolen, or downloaded from the Internet—and pass it off as their own work, they are cheating. Penalties for this form of plagiarism may range from a lowered grade on a portfolio, to an F for the portfolio or course, or, in extreme cases, expulsion from IUPUI.

• Failing to Cite Sources. If students have written an essay that includes passages, specific information, or striking language from another source, and fail to include appropriate documentation, they are violating academic expectations. Information that is summarized, paraphrased, or quoted from others’ work (including electronic texts, websites, classmates’ work, lectures, interviews, or written sources) should be correctly attributed in the text. Students who fail to cite sources in an early draft of an essay may respond to teachers’ written feedback or a conference. Students also may be referred to the University Writing Center to work with citing sources, and they be asked to review their text on their own. Depending on the extent of the problem, a portfolio grade may be lowered (just as failure to perform in some other key area of the course would lower a portfolio grade). In cases of extreme failure to cite sources, the portfolio may be judged failing. A student who fails to cite sources in a deliberate attempt to conceal the source of the work is considered to be cheating.

• Close-but-not-quite-quotations from sources. It is important that students be accurate in representing the work of others. Many students will not be able to distinguish an inaccurate from accurate citation, particularly when there is some attempt to acknowledge the source. This is a complex task and students should be expected to make mistakes as they learn it. As with the penalties for non-attribution of sources, the penalties for poor summarizing and paraphrasing vary depending on the context, and the extent of the problem.

Members of the Writing Coordinating Committee are available to consult with students about issues of plagiarism if information from the teacher is not sufficient to answer questions. Generally speaking, SLA and IUPUI policies require that the instructor prepare a written account of the information that led to the suspicion of cheating, and offer the student a chance to respond to the allegations, via either conference or letter. In the original contact of this matter bewteen student and teacher, the student should be made aware of the penalty that may be imposed. If the student does not refute the charges within the specified period, the penalty can be imposed, with notification made to the Dean of Student Affairs. 

Table 1: Ways of Using Sources and Possible Consequences

Rebecca Moore Howard’s "Plagiarisms, Authorships, and the Academic Death Penalty," College English 57.7 (1995): 788-806, was a useful resource in the preparation of this policy statement.

Plagiarism Resource Sites

There are a number of sites that provide helpful information about plagiarism. Here are just a few: 

Understanding Plagiarism, at Indiana University School of Education, provides information and a quiz you can take to aid in your understanding of plagiarism. 

Plagiarism: What It is and How to Recognize and Avoid It, at Indiana University’s Writing Tutorial Services, includes examples of plagiarism, such as acceptable and unacceptable examples of paraphrasing, plus strategies for avoiding plagiarism.

Is It Plagiarism Yet?, at the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL), offers tips and exercises for students.

Complaints and Questions

Contesting Grades and Other Student Complaints

At times, students may have a need to discuss complaints and concerns about their instructors, courses, or assignments with another faculty. The Writing Program treats student concerns with respect, although we encourage students and faculty to try to resolve any problems between them before requesting any outside help.

Members of the Writing Coordinating Committee are available to consult with students informally. Faculty addresses and those of writing program administrators are available in the directory; if you cannot contact the instructor, start with the course coordinator. If informal contact does not resolve the problem, formal procedures are available. A version of the Student Complaint form is below. Return the complaint form to Vicki Hale in the Writing Program office, CA 423.

Student Complaint Form

To address a concern about your grade in a writing class, you should first discuss the issue with your instructor. If for some reason you are unable to resolve your concerns by working with your instructor, you may submit a Student Complaint Form. Download the form, fill it out, and return it to the Writing Program Office (CA423). Attach the form to your portfolio (or other assignment) along with the written response you received from your instructor, including the grade and any evaluation sheets that indicate how the grade was determined. Course coordinators and other Writing Program administrators review student complaints. Although your instructor will not be involved in reviewing your complaint, he or she may be consulted. You should receive a response in 2 - 3 weeks.

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