Fostering a culture of ‘academic integrity’
It is the moral code that helps students set the foundation of their future and lives
Two weeks ago, while discussing career options and lifelong learning with two bright young graduates from Dubai, I came to realise that as a community, we are not preparing our students adequately for the rigours of higher education. Both students told me that one of the most challenging aspects of studying at an international institution was their policy on academic integrity. At school in Dubai, they were not taught the importance of the proper use and acknowledgement of source material.
“As school students, we were widely urged to use search engines like Google to look for information pertaining to the coursework. This created an environment of substandard submission material with the practice of ‘copy-pasting’ and basic paraphrasing which largely led to the loss of original thought by the student.
At university level of international relevance, this practice is deemed unacceptable, which creates adjustment issues for the students and affects their grades, Sonakshi Gandhi, now employed as a marketing professional, said. Academic integrity is compromised when students “buy” their assignments online or use another person to write their dissertation, copy from another per- son’s work or submit work that is obtained by fraudulent means.
Financial aid and scholarships
Students resort to unfair practices for various reasons. Good grades are required by those students whose financial aid or scholarships rely on maintaining a certain GPA. For some, fear of losing the scholarship/aid due to poor academic performance makes them resort to cheating.
Students often complain of a lack of time in meeting assignment deadlines or to study enough for an assessment, a rigorous semester workload, multiple exams per day and a stressful college routine — any of this could lead them to act with academic dishonesty. Inadequate The honour code is a statement addressing issues such as cheating, stealing, and misrepresentation, made by a school or other institution in which its participants pledge to adhere to. Honour codes are self-regulating because under an honour code, students are required to turn in other students in violation of the code. Some issues addressed in honour codes are the following:
Cheating Plagiarism Fabrication preparation, missing classes and lack of interest in studies makes students want an easy way out — a quick fix.
According to Raj Kapoor, Associate Dean of Operations and Administration in the School of Business Administration at the American University in Dubai: “Academic integrity is the moral code of academia. Basically it encompasses values such as the avoidance of cheating. It could be the result of a well-thought out plan or an instinctive and spontaneous act. The result however is the same — violation of academic integrity.”
Kapoor states that one of the most commonly cited reasons why students cheat is a “desire to excel” and get good grades for better jobs, getting into graduate school, to appease parental pressure and to shine among peers.
The advent of technology in classrooms has provided a whole array of sophisticated forms of cheating, too. The concept of BOYD (bring your own device) has made it very easy for students to copy and work with minimal effort.
“At the AUD we use Turnitin, Grammarly, and safe-assign [through Blackboard] to ensure academic integrity though there are several other software available,” Kapoor said. “Most students today are used to a culture of rewards and easily earned accolades from the start, and this sets a sense of success and entitlement in young adults. They cannot tolerate failure and desire easy success. for some, even if it isn’t earned, it comes at the cost of lying, cheating and compromising morality.”
The fear of being caught and the resulting penalty (suspension and/or expulsion, or forced course withdrawal) coupled with the shame accompanying these punishments can instill the
Multiple submissions Misrepresentation Unfair advantages ethos of not cheating. Institutions need to have clear-cut policies for academic misconduct. The academic culture and ethical environment will have a huge role to play in shaping ethical citizens.
This will naturally impact the work force and foster a sense of ethics and fair play in every aspect of life. Ignorance is not an excuse. Time management, planning in advance, and balancing academics with extracurricular activities is imperative.
Unfortunately, not all schools properly train students on how to distinguish between using a piece of work as reference and outright plagiarism.
In March this year, I attended one of the first Academic Integrity conferences in the region, hosted under the aegis of the International Conference on Academic Integrity, Middle East Chapter at UOWD. There was a lot of discussion on how to handle this often neglected area.
Apart from this, during a recent visit to Agnes Scott College, a Liberal Arts college for girls in the US, I was impressed by their Honour Code. Many institutions across the West have adopted the Honour Code.
In choosing Agnes Scott, a student accepts the Honour System as her way of life and formally adopts it by the following pledge: “As a member of the student body of Agnes Scott College, I consider myself bound by honour to develop and uphold high standards of honesty and behaviour; to strive for full intellectual and moral stature; to realise my social and academic responsibility in the community. To attain these ideals, I do therefore accept this Honour System as my way of life.”
Ethical practices get internalised when students follow codes.
The writer is the Director of Counselling Point and has worked with students in the UAE for years.
The morality of the issue — the need to have a clear sense of right and wrong. Most people dismiss the significance of academic integrity as pertaining only to the ‘academic’ world. Imagine a scenario which is too common these days: student ‘A’ steals another student ‘B’s’ student identity number. He/she uses it to log into B’s school library database, access articles to write research papers and submit them to acquire a competitive scholarship since A does not have access to those in his/her own school library. On the surface, most students would not find this scenario to be too unethical “because there is no visible harm to anyone”. Basically student A stole another student’s property to access a library he/she had no authority to access, to get an unfair advantage over other students and saw nothing wrong in it. What work ethic would he/she carry to the workplace?
Insights from your research. I have been working in this field for the past 11 years. I have found that a majority of dishonest behaviour in academia is not necessarily malicious. More often than not, students are simply unaware of the fine line that distinguishes between what action is considered dishonest. In the above case, imagine students A and B were friends and B simply shared his/her details with A to ‘help a friend out’. More often than not, in such cases, students are unaware of the significance of authorisation, security, privacy and property rights. What’s more, I have found that if the institution has clear policies that are well understood by staff, faculty and students, students are more inclined to behave honestly.
Do parents and schools fail to make students understand this? My research has shown that it is more often parent’s own lack of awareness that makes a behaviour dishonest or how important a role they play that fuels such behaviour among children. This is not something that is the responsibility of the academic institutions alone. Parents play a significant role in helping to develop that clear sense of right and wrong. It is a collective duty. We often find parents completing their children’s homework, or skipping work to watch a match on TV but telling someone on the phone that they are not well. What parents don’t stop to think about is how these acts are being perceived by their children. My research has shown significant impact of parents’ attitude towards such acts on their children’s attitude towards dishonest behaviour.
Integrity defines a person. It moulds character. Don’t run after marks.
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