Throughout the year, we consulted with Senate Academic Integrity Policy Review Subcommittee Chair Janet Shuh to share ideas and reflect on our findings. A flowchart showing the interface between Sheridan's Academic Integrity Process (as enabled by the AI procedure) and the Academic Appeals and Reconsideration Policy can be found on the next page.
Current AI Supports for Students
Survey: AI Policy and Procedure Feedback
Over 50% of the responses for the second were “program coordinator” and “all of the above” and the remaining responses varied, with individual responses such as “academic integrity officer if you had one,” “librarians,” “student Services' and 'Janet Shuh'. The following barriers were identified as reasons for not using/adhering to Sheridan's Academic Integrity Policy and Procedure; respondents assessed the importance of each obstacle.
SUMMARY OF RESEARCH FINDINGS
Culture , outreach , support and data surfaced as the key areas to address in
CULTURE
OUTREACH
SUPPORTING FACULTY
SUPPORTING STUDENTS
DATA
BUILDING AN INTEGRATED SHERIDAN MODEL
CULTURE, OUTREACH, SUPPORT AND DATA
Culture of Integrity and Leadership
Outreach – Faculty and Students
Supports – Faculty and Students
Data: Tracking Breaches of AI and Using Metrics to Bring About Change
PROPOSED ACADEMIC INTEGRITY REPORTING STRUCTURE AND STAFFING MODEL
Centre for Student Academic Excellence
Academic Integrity Office
The First Year Academic Skills Librarian, who reports to the Head of Library User Services, will work with the Academic Integrity Liaison to develop academic integrity. To help build the culture and awareness of AI at Sheridan, we recommend appointing an AI faculty representative to each of our faculties. This person would act as a conduit for information between the AI office and faculty, connecting AI expertise more directly to teaching and learning.
Senior Academic Leadership – Consider integrating and championing the importance of AI to senior leadership (Deans, VPs, Registrar) by linking to Sheridan's other strategic narratives (eg The Vision, Strategic Plan, Quality Assurance).
NEXT STEPS
Feedback and Discussion
RESEARCH FINDINGS
Academic integrity officers and directors from the University of Waterloo, Grant MacEwan University, a US leader in facilitating academic integrity, the University of Georgia and Ryerson University were interviewed between March 22 and April 6, 2016.
University of Waterloo
Amanda McKenzie, Director, Quality Assurance
31 | P a g e AIO has a good relationship with its tutoring centers—they promote services and events. They are both aware of groups offering private tutoring to earn money by completing assignments for students. She gave an example of flyers posted in Mandarin in various buildings on campus that provide this kind of clear assignment help; Students and faculty who only speak English don't know what the signs say, so signs like this stick around longer because they don't appear to contradict AI policy to begin with.
They also have posters in Mandarin outside campus advertising academic offers such as “whatever you need, we will provide it”. One thing she says is working well through her office is creating staff ambassadors for academic integrity. In collaboration with HR, they have set up a workshop that assesses integrity as a whole, and then narrows the focus to academic integrity and what this means for each of the employees present and how they can contribute and promote integrity in their working lives, with they return as ambassadors for AI for their colleagues and staff.
Tracey Szarka, Academic Integrity Officer, Faculty of Mathematics
Grant MacEwan University
Paul Sopcak, Academic Integrity Coordinator
33 | P a g e AIO (after feedback and comments and consensus with reviewer); it goes to the student, the. Paul notes that faculty buy-in to the AI process is a constant struggle due to the number of part-time faculty, misperceptions of procedure, and the onus on faculty to understand the policy and procedure.
University of Georgia
Deborah Bell, Director Academic Honesty and Student Appeals
The University of Georgia’s Facilitated Discussion Model for Resolving Academic Honesty Issues
The University of Georgia’s Facilitated Discussion Model for Resolving Academic Honesty Issues
Instructor/Student Facilitated Discussion
If dishonesty is determined to have occurred but a sanction is not agreed upon, the faculty member and student will continue the discussion with a five-member Academic Honesty Panel. If a student has two records, both of which result in a violation, the student must meet with the Multiple Violation Review Committee. The student now has 30 minutes to argue why he or she should still be a UG student.
The board does not return to any of the first violations, does not review old cases; they "lay down the law" for two past violations. The old policy had expelled a student after 2 violations, but it was too severe because some of the level 1 violations could be as minor as leaving quotation marks out of a quote in an assignment, for example. The Multiple Infractions Board has a tough job because they are looking at students whose academic careers are going out the window.
If it is less possible (dismissal or suspension), the board must justify the decision taken. Faculty members are told things to their faces that they might not otherwise be aware of because the counselor in the room helps the student feel confident.
Ryerson University
Robyn Jacobson, Director, Academic Integrity Office
Andrea Ridgley, Academic Integrity Officer, Academic Integrity Office Suzanne Hicks, Administrative Assistant, Academic Integrity Office
Ryerson University’s Undergraduate Academic Misconduct Flowchart
Undergraduate Academic Misconduct Flowchart
This includes the design of the course, daily classroom practice, the nature and administration of assignments and examinations, and the student's relationship with the instructor (p. 37). Citing McCabe, Lang writes in the search for determinants of academic dishonesty, peer influence tops the list of factors (p. 51). Using the four characteristics of a learning environment that can compel individuals to cheat (p. 35), Lang offers strategies on how teachers can structure learning environments to reduce cheating and increase learning.
Students are asked to relate course content to events, conversations, trends, or research that they experience uniquely within the semester;. One of the problems that Lang believes contributes to the cheating environment stems from a lack of coordination between campus policy and individual instructors (p. 165). Lang states that preparing students with a simple reminder about academic honesty right before taking the test, rather than limiting it to a standard AI review at the beginning of the semester, has also been shown to reduce cheating (p. 178).
Lang continues by noting that timing of educational campaigns can make a big difference; he suggests AI sessions take place in the days immediately before the start of the semester, or to review orientation to highlight. Lang suggests that for a first offense, the decision for punishment should fall entirely in the hands of the faculty member (p. 212).
In the statement of their own policies
In their individual response to that student
Donald McCabe, Linda Trevino, and Kenneth Butterfield's article, "Fraud in Academic Institutions, A Decade of Research," is cited across the spectrum of academic integrity (AI) research.
Prevalence of Cheating
Why Students Cheat-Contextual Factors
This article, printed in 2001, shows that cheating is common and that some forms of cheating have increased. For further research on the peer behavior variable, a 1997 study by McCabe and Trevino surveyed 1,800 students at nine medium-sized universities during the year 1993-1994; the results indicated the primacy of the institutional context in influencing fraud behavior. The contextual factors of peer cheating, peer disapproval of cheating, and perceived severity of punishment for cheating had significantly more influence than individual factors (described below).
Faculty Views of AI Policy
Honour Codes
Individual Factors for Cheating
Preventing Cheating
In 2013, Jane Griffith of York University studied how universities in Ontario currently promote academic integrity (AI) online through language and image. The study, published in the Canadian Journal for Higher Education, found that the majority of Ontario websites have an educational mandate in their online AI resources, which is consistent with current AI scholarship that praises education rather than after-the-fact punishment. The paper concludes that an AI website's language and imagery can contribute significantly to a student's AI education (p. 2).
Holistic plagiarism prevention often includes a focus on AI policies and student preparation and education; a 2005 McCabe study found that a pedagogical rather than a punitive approach increased the likelihood that faculty would report misconduct (p. 2). A 2011 study found that more than half of students surveyed by a Western Canadian university had committed at least one act of academic dishonesty (p. 3). A 2010 study cited by Griffith found that students who were required to complete an AI tutorial through a course management website significantly reduced plagiarism through education.
Understanding that text can shape image and image can inform text, the study examined the contrast of language and images used on various AI-powered websites at 22 CDN universities. The study only focused on universities as opposed to colleges and universities because colleges seem to house their AI.
Results
Slogan images, or staged photographs of people not otherwise linked to visual markers of AI except for a phrase linked to them, were also reviewed on the sites for their connotations. Some sites have broken links for the period of the survey, which was two years; this made the author wonder if the websites are being used regularly, and if the schools are taking the power of an AI website seriously enough (p. 17). Websites that are clearly written, educational rather than punitive, and consistent with images and texts that complement rather than contradict each other as well as websites that directly address students and distinguish between audiences and introduce readers as part of a scholarly community are all strategies to align best with recent research on AI.
In 2006, Julia Christensen Hughes of the University of Guelph and Donald McCabe of Rutgers University published a study on understanding academic integrity (AI) in the Canadian Journal of Higher Education. A review of the literature suggests that universities should be judged in part by their service. A review of US studies shows that most undergraduate students have engaged in some type of misconduct in completing academic work; this engagement occurs despite students' recognition that such behavior is morally wrong (p. 52).
Marital status-Married Less church attendance Lower test anxiety Student understanding and acceptance of academic misconduct policies Year level-Higher Less involvement in intramurals. Administrators and faculty play a significant role in creating an AI environment; they could do.
Institutional Strategies for Fostering AI
Strategies to combat academic misconduct: An analysis of academic integrity programming and guidance support at large public institutions in the United States and Canada [Report]. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/cheating-students-punished-by-the-1000s-but-many-more-go-undetected-1.2549621. Retrieved from http://oucqa.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Quality-Assurance-Framework-and-Guide-Updated-September-2015.pdf.
Retrieved from https://policy.sheridanc.on.ca/dotNet/documents/?docid=673&mode=view&public=true. The International Center for Academic Integrity 24th Annual International Conference: Academic Integrity: It Starts With Us. Retrieved from http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/promoting-academic-integrity-are-we-doing- enough/.
