Update
Adjusting to the dynamic nature of cheating in the Information Age
Higher education professionals grapple with revising academic integrity policies
Colleges and universities handle violations differently, but faculty and staff across institutions can agree that cheating, plagiarism, and fabrication are wrong. Studies show however, that students disagree, and cheating among high school and college students is widespread.
At Rutgers, faculty and judicial affairs staff are in the process of revising an academic integrity policy that hasn’t been changed since 1980. Practitioners decided to share their findings and perspectives with the wider community.
The Conference on Academic Integrity, an event of the Association for Student Judicial Affairs, took place at the Rutgers Student Center March 6. Faculty and staff from 13 colleges and universities and all three Rutgers campuses discussed new issues and challenges relating to intellectual honesty. Participants came from schools across New Jersey as well as Delaware and Philadelphia.
“The majority of the violations we see in judicial affairs are ones of academic integrity,” said Ave Pollak, director of judicial affairs at Rutgers. “We want to try to proactively reduce the number of violations we see.”
Drawing upon the close connection between students and faculty is imperative. Donald McCabe, a professor of management and global business at Rutgers Business School and one of the nation’s foremost experts on cheating, advocates for closer faculty involvement in combating and adjudicating academic integrity violations.
A proposed interim policy on academic integrity, agreed upon by members of the Rutgers University Senate (PDF) and an ad hoc committee chaired by McCabe and appointed by Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Philip Furmanski, calls for faculty to directly handle “level 1” and “level 2” violations at Rutgers – those infringements considered less flagrant and that result in a make-up assignment or academic probation.
Martha Cotter, a chemistry professor in New Brunswick who co-chairs the senate’s Academic Standards, Regulations, and Admissions Committee with undergraduate student Margaret Coppolo, said that the ad hoc group and the committee she co-chairs agree on many points.
“We thought there should be more safeguards for students,” Cotter said in a phone interview following the conference, adding that further discussion is needed to tackle how best to handle more serious violations that could result in suspension or expulsion.
Cotter said the most important thing is to ensure that students and faculty have enough informed input before any policy is adopted, interim or otherwise. At least one public forum on the topic is likely to take place over the next year, she said.
Students reporting greater cheating:
-- from Donald McCabe's research on cheating behaviors
Business and communications majors
Males had reported more test cheating, but females have closed the gap; females seem to report more cheating on written work
Students with low or high grade point averages
Those with significant time commitments – e.g., caring for dependent, job, athletics
Fraternity/sorority members to a moderate degree
The internet and the mounds of information available to today’s students create a sort of academic integrity morass. It is sometimes the case, McCabe said, that students who cheat or plagiarize don’t know they are doing so.
“I think sometimes students do make honest mistakes. I think we need to recognize and acknowledge that,” McCabe said.
McCabe, who has surveyed more than 165,000 college students and 40,000 high school students on the subject of academic integrity, said that college students are better rationalizers when it comes to cheating; they don’t always see things in black and white, and faculty members should try not to either. “Faculty need to listen to students and understand their concerns and needs,” he said.
Students who cheat say they do so because others around them do the same thing; they see no need to work hard; they struggle with time management; they are simply not interested in the course material; they experience immense pressure to get good grades; they do not want to disappoint their teachers or parents; and some teachers put unreasonable demands on students.
McCabe, who spent 20 years in the private sector, became interested in studying academic integrity issues in light of the stringent honor code in place at his alma mater, Princeton University. Years later, he studied adults and found that older students clearly recall honor codes, where younger adults had little awareness of honor codes at their colleges.
He called them “mechanisms for character development,” but acknowledged that honor codes, which put more of the burden of academic honesty on students and their peers, have limited impact today.
Initiatives that are having some impact include public awareness campaigns and interactive tools that students can look to, guiding them through the definitions of cheating, plagiarism, and fabrication, emphasizing the rigors of scholarly research, and helping them prioritize their academic responsibilities.
Gary Golden, director of the Paul Robeson Library at Rutgers–Camden, and Reference Librarian Vibiana Bowman, provide a tutorial video on academic honesty (also available on YouTube for other college and high school students to view), as well as an assignment calculator that helps busy students plot out assignments and gives them dates by which to complete discrete components of an assignment – finding sources and other research materials, and writing outlines and drafts of papers.
"We always have to be thinking one step ahead,” Golden said.
Matthew Ferguson, a graduate assistant in residence life in New Brunswick, created a Facebook group called “Rutgers Students Who Don’t Cheat” that disseminates information about academic integrity. The group has well over 500 members. “We are trying to innovate and do a lot of new things,” Ferguson said.
Integrating students’ “cultural capital” into the discussion is important to boost their understanding of cheating and plagiarism, Bowman said. “There are generational differences,” she said. “Students don’t have this linear attitude toward information. It comes to them from all different ways, all the time.”
Bowman, who is author of The Plagiarism Plague (Neal-Schuman, 2004) said that young people matured along with hip-hop music and culture and have adopted “rapid-fire cultural sampling from all over the place.” That is why many students don’t understand why cutting and pasting from internet sources is wrong. “If it’s freely floating around on the internet, then it must be free.”
The conference engendered discussion among professionals who also are looking to make changes at their schools. “I am on the academic standards committee at my school, and we just revised our academic integrity policy,” said Michelle O’Neal, director of nursing at Salem Community College in Carneys Point, New Jersey. “I have learned so much. We really believe most students are not aware they are cheating, so it’s up to us to help them understand.”