Ethics and Academic Ethics and Academic Dishonesty: Dishonesty:

Competitive Causes Competitive Causes and Cooperative and Cooperative

Solutions to Problems of Solutions to Problems of Cheating and Cheating and

PlagiarismPlagiarism

IntegrityStephen Carter, Integrity (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), p. 7: “The word integrity comes from the same Latin root as integer and historically has been understood to carry much the same sense, the sense of wholeness: a person of integrity, like a whole number, is a whole person, a person somehow undivided… The word conveys … the serenity of a person who is confident in the knowledge that he or she is living rightly… A person of integrity lurks somewhere inside each of us: a person we feel we can trust to do right, to play by the rules, to keep commitments” (bold emphasis added).

Cheating and Plagiarism

Defined:

Cheating: unauthorized assistance in graded, for-credit assignments

Plagiarism: appropriating the work of others and claiming implicitly or explicitly that it is one’s own.

Intentional and unintentional

Methods of Cheating1. High-tech methods

Internet Text beepers Cell phones PDAs and Handheld Computers Walkmans/Tapes/CDs

2. Low-tech methods Water Bottles Mirrored Glasses Body Writing The “Support” Bra Folded Paper/Leg Fans Duplicate Blue Books Phantom Students Test form replacements

Methods of Plagiarism

Internet Plagiarism Websites ~200

A Resource: Turnitin.com Technologically Undetectable Cases – custom

papers

Translations Patchwork Papers

Plagiarism the Old Fashioned Way More High Tech Methods

Causes of Academic Dishonesty

Lower Level Lack of Skill, Knowledge or Preparation, Time Constraints Laziness Excess workload Poorly defined/constructed assignments Lack of instructions

Higher Level Competitive View of Education

Bernard Gert’s view – the goal of education is to do the best that you can, but also to do better than others.

Individual Ascendancy – present orientation, hedonism, duty to self. (See Kibler, Nuss, Patterson and Pavela, 4)

Elements of Gert’s ViewSummary of Some Main Points (from pp. 191-196 of his Morality: Its Nature and

Justification and his presentation, “Cheating,” at the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum Conference, Gainesville, FL, February 2002).

Gert’s position is that academics are primarily (and perhaps exclusively) competitive. He likens the process to a game (so that if one is not playing by the rules, one is not playing the game). To cheat in a game is not to cheat umpires or referees (and so it is not to cheat faculty, or even the cheater), but it is to cheat the other players. Hence, cheating is cheating the other students (because part of the purpose is not simply to do well in the educational endeavor, but to do better than others).

Doing well is the primary goal, but that isn’t what makes cheating wrong. What is wrong is that it disadvantages others who are engaging fairly in the same competition. If academics are not competitive, then prohibitions against cheating are nothing more than paternalistic rules. But academics are competitive (and apparently should be so), and prohibitions against cheating derive from moral rules. Furthermore, faculty and administrators must be clear that their function is as “referees” whose function is to protect non-cheaters from cheaters.

The cheater is arrogant. “Cheating, no matter what the motive, shows that he (the cheater) regards himself as not being subject to the same constraints of the activity that everyone else participating in that activity is required to obey. It demonstrates an arrogance that is likely to show itself in even more harmful ways than cheating.”

Gert’s View Continued: A Rights-Based, Individualistic Approach

Education is Competitive; Analogy to Sports.

Cheating is Not Like Breaking a Promise.

Cheaters cheat other students and no one else.

Faculty referees

“The very stress on individualism, on competition, on achieving material success which so marks our society also generates intense pressures to cut corners”

(Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (New York: Vintage, 1999) 244.)

Argument 1

If academic activity were only concerned with learning and improving academic skills, other people wouldn’t care if someone cheats. But others do care if someone cheats. It follows that academic activities are not concerned only with learning and improving academic skills. Gert concludes from this that education is competitive.

ReplyBut the conclusion that education is

competitive does not follow from the original argument. All that follows from the notion that other people care when someone cheats is that academic activities are not concerned only with learning and improving academic skills for the individual.

Argument 2 When students understand that education is competitive,

they will take the opportunity to set up an approach to academic activity in which they are actively involved in prevention of academic dishonesty. He proposes that students take a vote at the beginning of each semester in each of their courses whether they prefer to have examinations proctored or whether they prefer not to have them proctored. His view is that no matter how they vote, it shows that students do not approve of cheating. So if they choose to have examinations proctored, it shows that they are concerned about the problem of academic dishonesty and are willing to have their own actions restricted to prevent cheating. On the other hand, if they choose not to have examinations proctored, it shows that they think cheating is not a problem.

Reply: There is something dramatically wrong with this argument. It seems to depend on two questionable assumptions - that students think of education as a competitive activity and students believe that those who cheat, cheat the non-cheaters. This, however, is clearly not the case – especially since students often help others to cheat, and in doing so, are cheating as well. Now, if Gert is proposing that students should come to view education in this light (as competition), then perhaps his proposal has some teeth. But if students come to view education as competitive, something valuable in the educational process is irretrievably lost.

Preventing Academic Dishonesty

Lower-Level Approaches

State expectations in your syllabi Explain rules of research Remind students of penalties & honor policy(ies) State clearly what is permitted and what is not permitted in your

classes

Unique Assignments

“Building Papers” an element at a time Limitations/Advantages

Conferences with students, in-class essays on papers, explanation of references

Proctor actively and avoid distractions

Beware (and be aware) of online resources

Preventing Academic Dishonesty: Higher Level Prevention

From my “Honor Codes, Individual Worth and the Academic Community:Teaching Ethics to Plagiarists and Cheaters Across the Curriculum”

Presented at the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum Conference, February 2002

Thesis: In a manner similar to that in which a Kantian understanding of punishment is “backward looking” and punitive, one may consider participation in an ethics seminar designed for cheaters and plagiarists to be in some sense retaliatory on the part of the college or university in which a conduct code violation has occurred. On the contrary, however, a Kantian view of punishment is also “forward looking” in that violators are reinstated into the academic community against which they have committed a violation, and their participation in an ethics seminar focused on issues of academic dishonesty is acknowledgement of their value as members of that community. Being recognized as a member of (and being reinstated into) an academic community is consistent with the dignity of the person and conducive to the goals of the academic community. Rather than simply to expel or punish, violators of academic codes of conduct become part of the content of the ethics seminar in which they are enrolled, becoming active participants in a course intended to foster understanding of the value of intellectual integrity.

I disagree with Gert’s position that the educational process is necessarily competitive, and I therefore also disagree with him that a cheater always cheats other students. My position is that the cheater cheats himself as well as the community of which he is a member. For a student to understand what “cheating yourself” means makes considerable difference in the motivation to avoid cheating and in our reactions to cheating.

Some considerations regarding Gert’s position:

What it lacks is appropriate incentive not to cheat. If Gert is right that education is competitive, it does not follow that the reason not to cheat is that others won’t allow you the opportunity to gain the benefits of the activity if you do. The cheater will, in that case, try to find more and better ways to cheat so as not to be caught.

Thinking of education as competitive, then, does not solve the problem of cheating. It might instead exacerbate it. The way to combat the problem of cheating is to prevent the temptation before it starts. And the way to do that is to build educational communities in which teachers and students interact with each other, not in which, on my understanding of Gert’s view, they act simply within the confines of an impersonal institution.

Higher Level Prevention Continued

A Virtue Ethics Approach

Community Ascendancy – future orientation, takes responsibility, duty to others (See Kibler, Nuss, Patterson, and Pavela, 4).

Stating the rules is not enough – understanding

Punishment is not the solution

A Kantian+Communitarian view of punishment

Who are the Victims of Academic Dishonesty?

What is Lost? For the individual For society

What is Gained?Who is affected, and how? How does student cheating reflect on faculty? Short-term and Long-term consequences

Education is not a game Cheating self, other students, instructor, institution,

society In what sense does the cheater cheat him/herself? Why do you care (if you care) if others cheat?

Academic Integrity Seminars:Proactive and Reactive

See these links for the students’ course at UCF: http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~stanlick/oscethicsjan03.html and http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~stanlick/oscethicsstudent.ppt

New Student Orientation

Reaction to Confirmed Instances Educational, not punitive

Standard Theories of “Punishment”: Forward Looking – Utilitarian/Community Oriented

Rehabilitative/Responsibility Oriented Backward Looking

RetributiveA Case of “Giving Up”

Reacting to Academic Dishonesty

Confronting the Student

Verifying Plagiarism the Old Fashioned Way

Making the Best of a Bad Thing

“Trust and integrity are precious resources, easily squandered, hard to regain. They can thrive only on a foundation of respect for veracity” (Bok, 249).

ReferencesBok, Sissela, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1999).

Herman, A.L., “College Cheating: A Plea for Leniency,” Journal of Higher Education, 37(5) May 1966: 260-266.

Kibler, William L, Elizabeth M. Nuss,et. Al., Academic Integrity and Student Development: Legal Issues and Policy Perspectives (College Administration Publications, 1988).

McCabe, Donald L, Linda K. Trevino and Kenneth D. Butterfield, “Cheating in Academic Institutions: A Decade of Research” Ethics and Behavior, 11(3), 2001: 219-232.

McCabe, Donald L. and Linda K. Trevino, “Academic Dishonesty: Honor Codes and Other Contextual Influences” Journal of Higher Education, 64(5), Sep-Oct. 1993: 522-538.

Noah, Harold J. and Max A. Eckstein, Fraud and Education: The Worm in the Apple (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).

On-Line ResourcesThe Center for Academic Integrity at Duke University. UCF Writing CenterMLA, Chicago, Other Manuals through UCF Library

Plagiarism: How to Recognize it and How to Avoid it. Go to http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/wts/plagiarism.html Ethics Updates. Go to http://ethics.acusd.edu/Resources/AcademicIntegrity/Index.html