¶ … educate students. There are many life lessons to be learned here at Rasmussen College. I am happy and proud to be a faculty member here in this great institution and sincerely enjoy being part of the educational experience for so many young people on a daily basis. I myself am also learning lessons every day, as life is a continuing learning process. This process must be unique in order for it to be important and have meaning. Students, in their experiences here at Rasmussen stand to benefit only when an honest and true effort is put forth. Success and failure depends on this authentic expression of the student to have any real purpose or individual meaning. The use of another's work without properly citing it can, in many instances be considered plagiarism. Not always, however, there is always more to the case than meets the eye. Teachers and faculty members, like myself, have certain tools and applications to help deter, instruct and in some cases punish students who attempt to violate important and relevant ethical academic codes that aim to limit academic fraud and cheating. These tools are useful for both protecting the school and other non-cheating students from the willful abuse of academic resources that is inherent in plagiarism.

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According to the college's academic integrity policy, "plagiarism is the process of using or copying another person's written words and/or ideas and claiming it as original. Rasmussen College considers plagiarism a serious offense, and will respond to any infractions according to the Academic Integrity Policy" (para.1). These offenses include plagiarism to include such actions as excessive paraphrasing, use of ghost writers and internet paper mills, and excluding obvious citations.
The college's policy does not suggest to use software devices to help identify academic fraud. Some institutions do use these types of programs such as TurnItIn, PlagiarismDetect, Copyscape, or other commercial software applications to help in detecting wrong doing. This is not supported at this college because it violates the student's rights and also because the school does not have any type of licensing on this expensive program.

To detect plagiarism and academic dishonesty, us as faculty members and educators must use reason and common and sense to approach this problem and offer solutions that respect the student's right to privacy and maintaining an ethical balance.…