Academic Integrity

Another challenge would be to reinforce the importance of academic integrity, from a young age, perhaps even starting from upper primary school levels, so that the practice of attributing information created by others is ingrained. Being able to do so would help in character-building and inculcate the values of honesty and respect for others. Students need to understand what constitutes plagiarism, how it can be detected with software like Turnitin or SafeAssign, why citations are necessary, how citations should be done and the consequences of plagiarism.

Schools, library staff, and staff from Student Services Office could work together to communicate such expectations to students and reinforce this regularly. Having an Integrity Week on a regular basis, for example, in the third or fourth week of each academic year, when students start working on their projects, is an interesting idea. No doubt some students may think this is just another campus activity, I feel that it will nevertheless highlight to students the importance of academic honesty, be it concerning projects, tests or exams.

One interesting example would be the Integrity Week at the University of Manitoba which includes a quiz on academic honesty ( http://umanitoba.ca/student/resource/student_advocacy/integrity12.html). For example, a question like – “Your professor can often tell that an essay has been plagiarised, even though they may not know where the plagiarised information comes from”, and the answer, “Professors study the topics they teach. They will likely have read many of the sources you will use to write papers”, tells students that it’s hard to beat their professors who are likely to know more than them, so any attempt to cheat is futile. This may seem quite obvious to the professors, but to students, maybe we need to tell them this in the face, to be sure they know it.

In the same light, maybe students could be quizzed on the exam regulations too. I am not sure how many students are actually aware that if they turn up X minutes late at an exam venue at the institution they are enrolled in, they are not allowed to sit for an exam and would be deemed to have failed. Although all these are important rules posted on an institution’s Web, many students may not have bothered to read them carefully.

During Integrity Week, there could be workshops to teach students about formal writing – academic writing, maybe organised on a school basis – different workshops for students from different disciplines, for example - Engineering and Business. These days, students are so used to SMS and MSN language, that writing a formal report (e.g. learning how to do paraphrasing) could be a real struggle for them. Students could also learn how to use open-source citation machines (e.g. via instant demos at booths). These citation machines include:

BibMe http://www.bibme.org/
Ottobib (books only) http://ottobib.com/
Zotero (for Firefox only) http://www.zotero.org/
EasyBib http://www.easybib.com/