Academic Integrity: Why It Matters
Academic integrity is a core value of our institution that impacts the teaching, learning, and scholarly activities that occur. Students in their orientation course are reminded of the importance of maintaining strong academic values as they progress throughout their program, a message reinforced in the Catalog and Student Handbook. Academic integrity extends beyond the classroom and is an indicator for how students will react in their careers to regulations and guidelines. However, research and subsequent literature highlights a myriad of reports suggesting a rise in cheating and plagiarism. The availability of technology and a mantra of “open source” are often cited as culprits for the increase. A simple search through Google and a plethora of articles or online quizzes pop-up and entice users to copy and paste them into their work. How can we, as educators engaged with students on a regular basis, curb this trend? Students today are bombarded with information and seemingly have it at their fingertips and need assistance in navigating the information. Students also need a clear understanding of what plagiarism is, and that it extends beyond just taking word for word someone else’s work. Often students forget or aren’t privy to the importance of citing when you take another person’s idea and/or thoughts. This information is covered in their orientation course, but the message requires constant reinforcement. We need our faculty engaged in this issue and actively working with students in each of their courses. What are some steps you can begin to incorporate in order to aid in reinforcing the importance of academic integrity and ensuring our students meet that demand? · Within each syllabus template there is a statement titled Academic Integrity. When you go over your syllabus highlight this statement as a starting point for a discussion on avoiding plagiarism. · Write into your syllabus under Instructor’s Expectations exactly how you will handle cases of plagiarism or cheating-and when you review your syllabus emphasize the importance of academic integrity. · Check for plagiarism. If collectively faculty don’t all subscribe to checking for and penalizing for plagiarism/cheating then students receive a mixed message about its importance. · If you are unsure about whether or not a student’s work is plagiarized ask a colleague or an Instruction and Curriculum staff member for their thoughts. · Know proper MLA citation and hold students to that standard. · Attend upcoming workshops that aid in the grading process as well as the understanding of MLA standards. Particularly if you feel as if grading or evaluating written work is not a strong skill of yours.
Clint McDuffie Assistant Director of Instruction Baker University School of Professional & Graduate Studies It’s Illegal: Why Check for Plagiarism and What to Do When You Suspect It. The Latin term for plagiarism is “plagiare” which means to kidnap. Consider this analogy: Using someone’s work as your own is like driving someone’s car as your own. “Officer, I was just using it for a little while; I wasn’t going to keep it.” Why check for plagiarism? · To preserve the reputations in academic research and to protect academic values · To maintain the goal of having students who can evaluate, analyze, and synthesize ideas as well as create original, thoughtful ideas · To carry practices of integrity and copyright law into the workplace · To abide by copyright laws of over 130 nations How to check for plagiarism 1. Before submitting essays, have students use WriteCheck.com to check for their own writing errors and plagiarism.
2. Assign an in-class writing the first day of the course. Keep this work as a record of the student’s writing style. If a future essay sets off red flags for you, compare it to the in-class sample writing you have on file. Compare sentence structures of each writing—does one draft have simple sentences while the other has complex sentences? Compare verb usage—does one paper use more complex verbs than the other? Compare these two sample sentences:
3. Search phrases from the student’s paper using these common sites. · Common student sites: 123helpme.com, studentoffortune.com, cheathouse.com · Common professor sites: dustball.com (click on plagiarism checker), turnitin.com, plagiarism.org How to handle suspected or verified plagiarism Talk with the student in person or on the phone. Emailing can confuse communication and further complicate the issue. Assess the situation: 1. See how the student is doing. This might alert you to extra stresses the student might be under at home, at work, in relationships, etc. and help you determine how you want to handle the situation. 2. Ask the student her opinion of her paper—did she like how it turned out? This might reveal new insight to how the student interpreted and carried out the assignment. Maybe she unknowingly plagiarized. 3. Tell the student this essay brought up some red flags when you conducted searches with it. Ask if he can explain. 4. Tell the student how you will handle this infringement (possibilities can include: rewrite the paper, but with a penalty; take a 0, etc.) To maintain academic integrity at Baker, it is important to check for and handle plagiarism in students’ papers. On-line resources can aid the instructor in detecting and validating plagiarism. Once suspected, the instructor should appropriately deal with the infraction. Kidnapping ideas ignores academia, and it is illegal. Creative Student Assignments May Avoid Plagiarism
Saul Bass and Mayo Simon’s 1969 Academy Award winning Documentary Short, Why Man Creates, defines creativity as looking at one thing and seeing another. Sometimes the papers we assign our students ask them to see things in only one way: the way we do. If we assign the same paper in multiple semesters, we perhaps unwittingly invite the opportunity for plagiarism. Employing creativity in the paper topics we assign our students might not only discourage plagiarism, it may help students actively engage in the subject at hand. Our students are busy, often looking for the shortest possible route to complete a task. Setting assignments unavailable on the Internet may ensure students do their own work. Setting assignments requiring students to personally connect with the material offers another hurdle to plagiarism. The connection might be by writing about local issues, or comparing situations in their personal workplace to more global issues. Another approach is to assign students to write about opposing sides of an issue, which they can then debate when they turn in their papers. Assigning narrow topics, or unusual combinations of topics may limit opportunities for plagiarism. Should a topic resist creative manipulation, requiring students to include a reflection statement with their research papers may help hold them accountable for their work. This reflection might include: 1) two or three important things the student learned from investigating the topic, 2) the student’s research strategy and the methods employed locate sources, 3) the most challenging part of the assignment or the part of the assignment that garners the most pride. The University of Hawaii provides a list of questions aligned to Bloom’s taxonomy, designed to encourage higher order thinking (http://www2.honolulu.hawaii.edu/facdev/guidebk/teachtip/questype.htm). Looking at assignments a different way may not only help our students avoid the easy trap of plagiarism; it may also enhance their critical thinking skills by synthesis and evaluation of information they are assigned to research.
Anne Daugherty, Ph. D Associate Professor and Chair, Graduate Liberal Studies Baker University https://sites.google.com/site/bumlabc/
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