Touchstones: Academic Integrity Guidelines

1. Sophia Student Honor Code

As stated in the Student Guide, students taking a Sophia course must abide by the following Student Honor Code:

• Each individual is permitted to register only one account. Maintaining multiple accounts is considered a violation of this Honor Code.
• You will agree to abide by the Academic Integrity Policy as outlined here. Sophia Learning reserves the right to update the Academic Integrity Policy at any time.
• You will agree to abide by the Sophia Code of Conduct as outlined here in all your interactions with Sophia Learning, staff of Sophia Learning, and Sophia Learning social media accounts. Sophia Learning reserves the right to update the Code of Conduct at any time.
• You will not engage in any other activities that are not outlined in the above policies that could dishonestly improve your results, improve or hinder the results of others or their experience at Sophia Learning, or bring Sophia Learning, students, and staff of Sophia Learning, or Sophia Learning’s partner universities into disrepute.

As outlined in the Academic Integrity Policy and the Sophia Code of Conduct, failure to comply with the Sophia Honor Code could result in removal from the course, removal of courses from your transcript, and/or disqualification from enrolling in future courses. Full policies and procedures can be found in the attached documents.

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2. What Is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is the act of presenting someone else's ideas or writing as your own, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

Even if you don’t intend to plagiarize, this behavior is considered unethical, and sometimes even illegal. Unintentional plagiarism occurs when a writer fails to give credit to a source, while intentional plagiarism involves the deliberate use of another’s ideas under the guise of original work.

2a. Detecting Plagiarism

Plagiarism is most often detected from intentional or unintentional presentation of ideas and writing without proper citation from outside sources such as homework websites, previous learner submissions, or any online content.

All Sophia Touchstones are scanned upon submission through a detection integration built directly into the grading interface. Graders interpret these results based on the instructions and type of Touchstone. This includes identical matches, matches with minor changes, and paraphrased matches.

Recycled work, or essays written and graded for previous courses, are also considered a form of plagiarism for Sophia courses and will not be acceptable for grading.

2b. Consequences of Detected Plagiarism

In all academic settings, plagiarism of any kind has consequences. In this course, detected plagiarism will result in the Touchstone being placed in a Plagiarism Detected state with an explanation from the grader describing the type of plagiarism presented. Learners will then have a single opportunity to resubmit.

Additional attempts at plagiarism will be addressed through escalation to the Student Affairs Team as per the Academic Integrity Policy outlined here. The Student Affairs Team may issue sanctions consistent with that policy if plagiarism is detected.

2c. Scanning Prior to Submission

Scanning your own work through a plagiarism detection application or website before submitting your Touchstone may result in a high percentage of detected plagiarism. If you choose to scan your Touchstone through any plagiarism detector before submitting, it is recommended that you include your name, date, and Sophia course information to confirm your identity and the course assignment to rule out intentional or unintentional plagiarism concerns.

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3. Methods for Avoiding Plagiarism

When presenting others’ ideas in the context of your writing, there are a few key ways to appropriately indicate where the ideas came from. These include summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting, and using in-text and reference page citations.

3a. Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Quoting

Summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting are three ways to incorporate evidence from other sources into an essay or presentation.

Summarizing means giving a brief overview of the main points or ideas of a piece of writing without relying on specific details or language. This would involve writing something very general about a whole piece of text; by summarizing, you’re giving an overview of the whole piece without using any details or specifics.

Paraphrasing means restating a passage in your own words, keeping the author’s original intent and meaning. This would involve rewriting something that another piece of writing has already said using different words entirely, usually to increase clarity. Paraphrases are therefore only of specific lines or sentences, and they must keep the author’s original meaning intact.

Quoting is repeating the exact words from a piece of writing, with quotation marks surrounding the repeated words. Using quotation marks is essential to make it clear to the reader which words are yours and which come from somewhere else.

Whether you are summarizing, paraphrasing, or quoting, please remember to always cite any information that comes from an outside source and that is not considered common knowledge.

3b. In-Text and Reference Page Citations

In-text citations are brief references within the body of your work that point to the source of information or ideas. A reference page, found at the end of your document, provides full details of all sources cited, such as the author's name, title, publication date, and publisher. These citations are crucial for avoiding plagiarism because they give proper credit to the original authors, allowing readers to verify sources and follow up on the information. By acknowledging the contributions of others, you maintain academic integrity and respect intellectual property rights.

learn more

For help with how to create in-text and reference page citations, visit Sophia's Citation Help tutorial.

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3c. When to Cite

This section covers when citations are needed, when you would not need to cite source information, and how to organize and keep track of source information.

When citations are needed:

• Direct quotes: If using specific and exact words from a source, cite it. Remember that quotation marks are needed around the quoted content.
• Paraphrased or summarized source information: If you are using an author’s idea or an idea that comes from source information, and not your own idea, cite it.
• Information that is not common knowledge: If you learned the information from your research, cite it.
• Numerical data: If integrating facts, statistics, percentages, or other numerical data, cite it.
• Images, graphs, multimedia, or other visuals should be cited.
• If the information was learned in a Sophia course or in another course, it should be cited.

When citations are not needed:

• Information that is common knowledge: If relaying information that is common knowledge, you do not need to cite it. For example, stating that the Yankees are a baseball team based in New York.
• Your own analysis and ideas: There will be many times when writing Touchstones or papers that you will integrate your own analysis and ideas. Your own ideas also do not need to be cited.

Organizational tips for keeping track of source information:

• Apps such as Mendeley or Zotero can help with organization. A list of sources, using a Google Doc or Word file, can be just as helpful. The key is to stay organized and keep track of your source information as you research and write.
• Check that each sentence that is source information includes the proper citation.
• Include a complete reference citation and in-text citation for all sources used in a Touchstone.

try it

Practice identifying when you need to cite your sources. Read the examples below, and for each one, decide whether you should include a citation. Click on the blue plus sign to see the answer.