Academic Integrity in an Electronic World: Student Cheating and Plagiarism November 9, 2010 Brown Bag The University of Arizona

How prevalent is academic dishonesty? It appears to be a significant problem. Donald McCabe – surveys of student and faculty 1990 – present Recent work by others on online/blended courses vs. face-to-face

Examinations: 21% students admit to copying, use of crib notes or helping someone to cheat on an exam 33% admit to learning what is on an exam from someone who has already taken it (2005 McCabe)

Written Assignments: 42% of undergrads and 26% of grads worked with others when asked for individual work 36% undergrads report copying from a web source without citation 59% of faculty report seeing cases of word-for- word copying without citation; 7% of undergrads and 4% of grads report doing this (2005 McCabe)

Other assignments: 19% of undergrads report falsifying lab data at least once 39% faculty observed students copying someone else’s work for a required computer programming assignment (2005 McCabe)

Do online courses have less integrity? Lack of physical contact increases doubt about identity of student, possible use of a stand-in. Students perceive cheating in online courses to be as frequent as or greater than in face- to-face. (Harmon et al 2010) Heavy reliance on un-proctored multiple- choice exams may increase possibility of cheating.

What do we see at The University of Arizona? What types of violations have you observed in the last 3 years? Do you observe an increase in certain types of violations? Do you use unproctored mutiple choice OR written short answer/essay exams? Why or why not?

Promote integrity Define cheating. “Over 40% of undergraduates and 30% of graduate students (and almost 20% of faculty) are … not convinced that ‘cut and paste’ plagiarism is moderate or serious cheating.” “Unpermitted collaboration is a particularly difficult issue.” (McCabe 2005) Do not ignore suspected violations.

What tactics or strategies have you found (in) effective for promoting academic integrity? Does a positive peer culture (McCabe and Pavela) exist at the U of A with regard to academic integrity? What tactics or strategies have you found (in) effective for promoting academic integrity? Does a positive peer culture (McCabe and Pavela) exist at the U of A with regard to academic integrity?

Prevent violations Use question shuffling tactics. Multiple versions of exams & randomization of questions and answers (D2L can create a unique exam for each student.) Selective reuse of previous exam questions Use creative and varied forms of assessment. Carefully consider the percentage-of-final grade of any single assignment—especially an unproctored exam.

Prevent violations Create MC-type (and written) exams that test higher order thinking skills. Proctor examinations. Outreach College can help with online courses. Will this be a temporal, physical or financial barrier for students? n.b. Seating arrangements may not be effective.

Detect violations Use TurnItIn plagiarism detection software. Integrated into D2L dropbox Similarity report for each written assignment Analyze D2L quiz log of events. Are there long “gaps” between login, submission or saves? Do you see sequential login of pairs of students from the same computer?

Case study: NATS101 The Challenge: mid-term and final examinations 182 students, 2 graduate teaching assistants, 4 lecturers The Plan: 3 versions of Part 1 of the exam: online objective test, randomized questions and answers 3 versions of Part 2 of exam: essay questions; answers to be uploaded to D2L dropbox and reviewed by TurnItIn Limited access to exam Students had to login inside of a 15 minute “start period.” They had 30 minutes to complete Part 1. Once a student completed Part 1, s/he could access Part 2 for 30 minutes. Deadline was not automatically enforced for Part 2.

What happened? What changes will be made?

Gretchen Gibbs Office of Instruction and Assessment at The University of Arizona Manual Pacheco Integrated Learning Center Fax