As instructors of introductory composition and general education courses, we are well-acquainted with the threat of plagiarism. In graduate school, our teaching practicums devoted hours to the student “temptation for plagiarism,” and every semester, instructors receive the same emails reminding us of our institution’s
One of the bedrock principles of academia is not taking credit for another’s work. The way that faculty enforce that directive is by requiring citations in student research.
But formal citations, whether in APA or another format, are used almost exclusively in academic publications. Nearly
Plagiarism detection reports from companies such as Turnitin are the primary way that faculty identify cheating on written work. But my experience in working with hundreds of faculty has shown me that most misread these reports because they have not received proper instruction on how
A healthy academic community treats its members as honest people. As scholars, we presume that our colleagues earned their degrees without cheating, that they report the results of their research accurately, that they write their own papers. When we think of our colleagues as honest
For the last seven years, I have had the absolute honor of working with college students who have committed academic misconduct. Every student at my university who is found in violation of academic misconduct is automatically sanctioned to the office of Integrity and Ethical Development,
The most common approach to cheating involves trying to prevent it—multiple versions of a test, roving observation during tests, software that detects plagiarism, policies that prohibit it. However, if we look at cheating across the board, what we’re doing to stop it hasn’t been all
The collection of cheating scenarios provided below are adapted from a variety used in research on academic integrity. What makes these scenarios such helpful learning tools is their identification of specific behaviors and the context in which they occur. Some of the scenarios also highlight
Although some behaviors are pretty much universally identified as cheating (copying exam answers, for example), we’re not in agreement on everything. Particularly significant are disagreements between faculty and students (for example, students don’t think cheating occurs if they look something up on their phone and
Cheating and its related issues have been studied extensively for decades. There’s an overwhelming amount of literature. However, results from the past and the present confirm that cheating has been and continues to be a serious problem in higher education.
Here’s an overview of what’s
I’m still wandering around in the literature on cheating. It’s hard not to get depressed. It’s such a pervasive problem and one that compromises all that education could and should be.
Faculty are pretty much focused on preventative measures, which are essential, but there
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