OPINION: Dr Don Houston, Senior Lecturer in Higher Education \u2013 CILT<\/p>\n
As we re-embark on a review of the University\u2019s Academic Integrity policy, I\u2019ve been thinking about issues that need to be considered in the review. I\u2019ve also been looking back over my social media channels \u2013 Facebook and Twitter \u2013 where academic integrity is mentioned on a more or less regular basis, to see what prompts for consideration they might contribute to the review.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve sketched out some thoughts and opinions below.<\/p>\n
The University\u2019s academic integrity policy begins with the following statement:<\/p>\n
All students and staff have an obligation to understand and respect the rules and practice of academic integrity. It is therefore expected that students and staff will adhere to high standards of academic integrity. The University will provide resources to assist students and staff to be aware of their responsibilities. It is expected that academic staff will provide appropriate guidance, support and feedback to assist students to become familiar with the normal academic conventions relevant to their discipline.<\/em><\/p>\n The University will provide text-matching software for use by staff and students.\u00a0 Except where this policy provides for an exemption under special circumstances, all text-based student assignments will be subject to text-matching in conjunction with their submission for assessment.<\/p>\n The italicised<\/em> broad statement of expectations of staff is expanded later in the policy. One of the 12 listed staff responsibilities is \u2018ensuring that appropriate action is taken in accordance with this policy if potential breaches of academic integrity are revealed\u2019. The other 11 focus on the educative and assessment design responsibilities of staff. But that one seems to dominate staff attention and effort \u2013 I have no evidence to support this assertion but from conversations it seems to be the case. This is perhaps unsurprising given that virtually the whole of the policy focuses on the nature of breaches of academic integrity and the processes for dealing with them.<\/p>\n Fortunately, the policy does differentiate types of breaches of academic integrity. It influenced a recent tweet of mine:<\/p>\n Not all plagiarism is equal: not all plagiarists are cheats. Poor referencing practice is not the same as contract cheating. Respond differently to them.<\/p>\n And recently, this \u2018Advice\u2019 section article from The Chronicle of Higher Education<\/em> popped up on my Facebook timeline https:\/\/www.chronicle.com\/article\/Cheating-Inadvertently\/229883<\/a> (I have a problem with the label \u2018inadvertent cheating\u2019 as cheating to me is by nature a deliberate act). The subtitle of the article is \u2018Even faculty members disagree on when paraphrasing becomes plagiarism. How can we expect students to know?\u2019<\/p>\n One point the article makes is that we can only expect students to know if we teach them, and provide opportunities to practice without penalties attached. So do we do this explicitly, and enough? In my opinion, getting students to work through the Academic Integrity for Students FLO module and do the quiz is a start but not enough.<\/p>\n A similar situation arises with text-matching software: do we do enough to help students understand what it does and what a similarity report percentage score means\/doesn\u2019t mean?<\/p>\n An indication of student understanding comes from this post on the \u2018Overheard at Flinders\u2019 Facebook page:<\/p>\n Submited an essay today and got 29% plagiarisem. Checked, and all that is highlited are the parts I have refrenced and the footnotes. Any ideas?<\/p>\n This post prompted a substantial number of responses from students (a lesser number from staff who follow the page). Some were well informed about the use and interpretation of text-matching software (ie Turnitin), while others showed quite inaccurate understandings of what it does and what similarity percentages show or mean. Some responses indicated that students have experienced different responses to perceived breaches of academic integrity:<\/p>\n You will be fine. It\u2019s not until you actually have someone’s else’s work 100% identical that they care…. yes this happened to me<\/p>\n As I tweeted a month or two ago:<\/p>\n Turnitin doesn’t identify plagiarism: it matches text. Text can match for a host of reasons: the similarity % indicates that text matches \u2013 nothing more. Differentiating coincidental matches, poor academic practice or more serious breaches of AI require judgement by academics.<\/p>\n So to return to the point about teaching and practice around Turnitin, perhaps we need to educate students to respond to similarity reports in a more informed and less fearful manner? Perhaps our own, at times na\u00efve, use of the tool contributes to the fear and near panic that similarity reports cause for some students.<\/p>\n Perhaps if we do better on educating students on academic conventions like referencing and acknowledging contributions of others to work, skills like paraphrasing, and making positive use of similarity reports as learning tools, then we could focus more attention on changing conditions to limit opportunities for the more worrisome practice of cheating.<\/p>\n Cheating and specifically contract cheating have been getting quite a bit of press recently, largely due to excellent work being undertaken by our colleagues Tracey Bretag and Rowena Harper at UniSA and their collaborators on an OLT-funded project.<\/p>\n As I tweeted recently:<\/p>\n excellent workshop with @TraceyBretag<\/a> and @RowenaHarper79<\/a> on contract cheating and assessment design. A key message: contract cheating is a symptom not the problem. The problems are systemic & need systemic solutions.<\/p>\n Their work is having national and international impact. TEQSA has sponsored Tracey Bretag to produce a good practice note on the subject:<\/p>\n TEQSA\u200f\u00a0@TEQSAGov<\/a> 24 Nov 2017<\/a><\/p>\n TEQSA Retweeted Campus Review<\/p>\n Great article on contract cheating by @CampusReview<\/a> and @TraceyBretag<\/a>. If you haven’t read the good practice note on contract cheating, head over to our website: https:\/\/goo.gl\/VHC8jP\u00a0<\/a> We’ve also made a recording of the academic integrity forum available: https:\/\/youtu.be\/hVupH4mfVEY<\/a><\/p>\n The project has produced an array of infographics and resources, and two recent publications that are well worth reading:<\/p>\n\n