Academic honesty: principles, practices, and institutional frameworks

Academic Honesty

Issues surrounding academic honesty have been around as long as academia itself; however, the recent advancement of the Internet has complicated these issues. Recent statistics from the University of Oregon indicate a fourfold increase in cheating from 1999 to 2004. And the numbers continue to rise. Recent polls found that around one-third of students admit to using technology to cheat, and many don't even see it as wrong What do these statistics say about American society today? First of all, it's important to consider the reasons why some students cheat and others do not; this will naturally lead into modern day technology and its effects on academic honesty. Next, this essay will explore the various deterrents and punishments academic institutions have adopted to deal with student deceit. Finally, possible future developments regarding technology and the enforcement of academic honesty will be explored.

What compels a particular student over another to choose academic dishonesty in order to achieve a higher grade? Cheating doesn't discriminate. Researchers have found that individual personality and environmental factors don't generally determine who will choose dishonesty over hard work. Cheating can take many different forms: copying during tests, using crib notes, unauthorized collaboration on homework, faking results, plagiarism, facilitating others' cheating, lying about excuses for incomplete assignments, failure to contribute to a group project, and sabotaging another's work.. Some students probably don't even consider all of these examples cheating; everyone slacks off on a group project now and then, right? When a school doesn't clearly communicate to students what constitutes cheating, those students can more easily excuse their own behavior. Many other factors have been cited as "excuses" for academic dishonesty: heavy academic workload, too many outside activities (jobs, sports, etc.), poor teaching, poor assignment explanations, poor teacher availability outside of class, competition with other cheaters, parental demands for high grades, performance requirements for financial aid or scholarships, and/or the need to have a certain grade point average for a particular job or graduate program. Studies reveal that students then choose to cheat in a first-degree, "planning" manner, or in a second-degree "panic" mode.

Of course in the 21st century age of the Internet, another reason given for cheating may be that it's just too easy. When various "essay-writing" or "research" services are provided online at a cost and offer anonymity to the buyer, and hundreds of websites and other online resources provide limitless "sources" for plagiarism, it's very difficult for educators to catch a cheater, prove the cheating took place, or simply stay ahead in the ongoing cheating game. In addition, modern society provides cheating education -- websites and books that teach students how to beat the system and get better grades dishonestly. But the Internet isn't the only technological tool being used to cheat; others include sending answers through pagers, Palm Pilots, programmable calculators and watches, texting through cell phones, hacking into school and administrative systems to change grades, sharing work through the school computer network, and sending work through fax machines to avoid detection. In addition, online courses are becoming very popular, with many exams being administered online. How do professors prevent blatant cheating during off-site testing? Some techniques include: requiring students to participate in online discussion groups and taking note of their writing style, randomly calling students during the semester with a pop oral exam question, add a time limit to the exam, require students to use a webcam during exams, or giving an entirely different test to each student. Of course, in all these cases except the web cam requirement, unsupervised students can be looking up answers online or from textbooks; however, professors have gotten very adept at creating timed exams in which looking up answers will provide little difference in a final grade. Many colleges actually allow students to use one or two "cheat sheets" during exams, since at the university level the amount of information to memorize can be overwhelming.

In addition to measures used to deter cheating on online exams, educators are employing other tactics in response to increased cheating. Preventive measures include old hats such as threatening punishment (even expulsion or legal action, in some cases) or appealing to morality, as well as changing exam and homework questions more often, making sure answers cannot be found online, requiring all students to submit writings about academic honesty, peer reporting requirements, official integrity training, use of plagiarism detection software, requiring students to handwrite and sign "honor pledges" on all work, educating parents about academic dishonesty, and so on. Time will tell which of these methods actually work; some current research is focused on testing their efficacy