Memo
To:
Faculty and Instructors
From:
Margaret L. Usdansky, Director, Academic Integrity Office
Date:
September 8, 2014
Re:
Ideas & Material for Engaging Students in Discussion of Academic Integrity
This summer, the Academic Integrity Office (AIO) revamped its fall orientation programming
with the goal of reaching more students more effectively. Rather than making as many
individual presentations in as many classrooms as we can get to, we have focused on making
presentations to groups of faculty and instructors and providing them with tools for use in
engaging students in classroom discussion of academic integrity.
The reason for our new approach is twofold: First, my experience at AIO and research on
effective teaching underscore the need for students to hear directly from faculty and instructors
on this topic. Students are most likely to hear and absorb messages about academic integrity
when those messages come from the instructors who design, teach and grade their courses.
Second, we are a staff of two. We can reach many more students by providing instructors with
tools and information than by leading classroom discussions ourselves.
To this end, I am providing faculty and instructors with a set of material aimed at engaging
students in discussion of academic integrity.
The attached material includes a list of recommended topics for discussion and related
information and/or material to assist you in addressing each topic. The goal is to provide a
menu of topics and material from which you may choose what you find most interesting and
most relevant to the courses you teach.
I invite you to modify these topics and materials to make them as relevant as possible to your
courses – and to credit AIO and include citations we’ve provided when presenting enclosed
material to students, whether in written or oral form. Many students note and puzzle over
instructors who emphasize the importance of citation in written assignments but do not
consistently include citations in their own class presentations.
Finally, I encourage you to raise academic integrity in small, frequent “doses” over the course
of the semester rather than designating one class session for discussion of this topic. Doing so
will better convey to students the importance you place on academic integrity and will increase
the odds that short classroom discussions and occasional reminders will catch students when
they are most likely to listen attentively, that is, shortly before an assignment is due or an exam
is scheduled.
Please do not hesitate to contact AIO with comments, questions or requests for additional
information by emailing or calling us at aio@syr.edu or 443-5412.
2
Topics for Engaging Students in Discussion of Academic Integrity Expectations
1. Why you value academic integrity in your classroom: The value of academic integrity may seem
obvious to you, but students are often puzzled by acacemic integrity standards, particularly with
regard to use of sources and collaboration. Students are accustomed to the exchange of unattributed
ideas and information on websites and in social media. They know that politicians and corporate
leaders often deliver speeches written by unnamed assistents. They may realize that unspecified
editors substantially revise the words of journalists. And many students notice that some faculty take
tremendous care with citation in written work but fail to cite sources for oral and visual work, for
example, in classroom Power Point presentations. Expectations vary by context when it comes to
collaboration, as well. Some instructors encourage students to study exams from past semesters and
require group projects, group writing and group laboratory work. Other instructors forbid these
practices. Students need to hear directly from you. Why do you value academic integrity in your
classroom? How do you define academic integrity in your classroom? Where do you draw the line
between allowed and prohibited collaboration on group work or joint studying?
a. The central role of citation in research: Ask students what they know about your job. Most
students know little about the work faculty and instructors do beyond teaching. Telling
students about your area of expertise, the role that research plays in your career, and how
citing and being citing by other academics affects you will help explain the value placed on
citation in academia – and the expectation that students will cite sources they use even
though only a minority of students expect to enter academia themselves.
b. How research works: Students often imagine academic research as a one-shot deal, a quick
event that confirms a hypothesis or answers a question immediately – forever. Walking
students through an exercise designed to illustrate the evolution of an important research
question in your field (particularly including the construction and destruction of consensus
around answers to that research question) can help students appreciate the value of tracing
the intellectual contributions of multiple researchers over long periods of time in
understanding the evolution of knowledge. Another good exercise involves assigning
students to read a peer-reviewed journal article in your field. Ask students to analyze the
structure of the article: How many sections are there? What is the purpose of each section?
Which sections contain more or fewer citations. What explains this variation? Additional
useful talking points: Compare failure to cite sources to physical theft or to omitting a
relative from a family tree. Students will laugh if you ask how many of them stole a cell
phone last summer or left grandma off the family tree, but they’ll get the point.
c. Making the case for academic integrity personal: Talk with students about tough ethical
decisions you’ve made in the course of your academic career. What gray areas exist. How
have you handled them? What have observed with regard to the academic integrity of other
academics in your field, those you admire and those you do not admire? How do you feel
when you believe one of your students has cheated? How might “small-scale” cheating in the
classroom affect students later in life?
Academic Integrity Office (AIO), Syracuse University, August 2014
3
Topics for Engaging Students in Discussion of Academic Integrity Expectations
2. What are the university-wide academic integrity (AI) expectations at SU, and what additional
expectations apply in your classroom? Our website, academicintegrity.syr.edu, features a variety
of information about SU’s university-wide expectations. The one-page “Summary of SU’s AI
Expectations,” reiterates information provided to SU students twice an academic year in MySlice
during pre-term check-in at the beginning of the fall and spring semesters. (At these times, students
must update emergency contact information and provide an electronic signature agreeing that they
will abide by the University’s AI expectations. Until they sign, students are unable to navigate to
student information pages, including pages they need to view grades and change their course
schedule.) The more detailed “Full Statement of SU’s AI Expectations” reproduces the entire
discussion of academic integrity expectations contained in SU’s Academic Integrity Policies and
Procedures.
a. Understanding SU’s AI expectations: Depending on the nature and level of your course,
you may wish to give students a copy of the “Summary of SU’s AI Expectations” and invite
students to comment and ask questions. Caution students against assuming that they know
everything they need to know about these expectations. Remind them that the bar for citation
is higher in academia than in many other fields. Do they realize that they must receive
written permission from both instructors before submitting the same written work in two
courses? Do they understand the presumptive penalty for a first violation of academic
integrity and how it varies by undergraduate or graduate status?
b. Understanding course-specific expectations: Regardless of the subject and level of your
course, you should discuss what forms of collaboration will be allowed and what forms of
collaboration will be prohibited in your course. If you consider the sharing of homework
assignments or exams from current or past semester to violate academic integrity, you should
make this clear to students. Similarly, you should draw clear distinctions for student if you
allow collaboration in the initial phases of a project or laboratory assignment, but expect the
final or written work to be performed independently.
c. Using case studies to engage students in discussion of gray areas within AI standards:
Included in this package of materials is a page (“Academic Integrity Case Studies”) of three
case studies designed to help students to consider varied aspects of academic integrity. Feel
free to use these case studies in your classes and to modify them to reflect realistic questions
students might have about permissible and prohibited behavior in your courses with regard to
citation and collaboration. If you develop additional case studies you are willing to share
with other faculty, email them to aio@syr.edu. We’ll put them on our website and cite you as
our source. Note: Some students prefer to think of academic integrity as straightforward and
want you, the instructor, to tell them what to do and what not to do. It may be helpful to have
students read the recent Chronicle of Higher Education article “Confuse Students to Help
Them Learn” (8/14/2014 by Steve Kolowich, http://chronicle.com/article/Confuse-Studentsto-Help-Them/148385/).
Academic Integrity Office (AIO), Syracuse University, August 2014
4
Topics for Engaging Students in Discussion of Academic Integrity Expectations
3. Giving students opportunities to hone their citation skills: Many, if not most, students need help
in understanding standard citation practices when summarizing, paraphrasing and quoting other
peoples’ ideas and words. Included in this package is a set of exercises (see “Tools for Teaching Use
of Sources”) for helping student develop these skills. Our exercises draw from two websites featured
on our own website: The Harvard Guide to Use of Sources and the Purdue Online Writing Lab
(OWL). Both provide wonderful, specific information defining what it means to summarize,
paraphrase and quote from a source as well as relevant citation standards in each case.
a. If writing and citation feature prominently in your course, you may want to consider
developing a longer assignment to help students practice their citation skills. One option is to
have students practice with an initial writing assignment involving readings related to your
course and subject matter. Another option involves asking students to write about academic
integrity itself or plagiarism cases specifically. Links to some recent articles on these topics
can be found on our website, academicintegrity.syr.edu, including coverage of alleged
plagiarism cases involving the website Buzzfeed, Montana Senator John Walsh, UNLV
literature professor Mustapha Marrouchi, and members of the Notre Dame football team.
You may also be interested in a writing assignment developed by English instructor Jeff
Karon (“A Positive Solution for Plagiarism,” Chronicle of Higher Education, September 18,
2012), who directs his students to download, read and critique a paper produced by a paper
mill.
4. Why do students (and others) cheat? Is college cheating on the rise? A number of resources are
available if you would like to engage students in discussion of research on the prevalence of cheating
in college and factors that discourage – or encourage – cheating in college and elsewhere. These
include:
a. Duke University professor of psychology and behavioral economics Dan Ariely, author of
The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty (Harper Collins, 2012), maintains a web page
(http://danariely.com/tag/the-honest-truth-about-dishonesty/) describing his research,
including tests of the efficacy of reminders and pledges on exams and essays (e.g. “I pledge
that this work is solely my own….”) and his response to the illegal downloading of his book.
A review of Ariely’s book by Joome Suh (Journal of the American Academy of Child &
Adolescent Psychiatry, volume 52, issue 1, January 2013, pp. 106-107) is available through
the SU library website via Web of Science.
Academic Integrity Office (AIO), Syracuse University, August 2014
5
Topics for Engaging Students in Discussion of Academic Integrity Expectations
b. Assumptino College English professor James Lang (Cheating Lessons: Learning from
Academic Dishonesty, Harvard University Press, 2013) focuses on four contextual factors
that, in his reading of the cognitive psychology literature, encourage classroom cheating and
what faculty can do to create contexts discourage cheating. The four factors Lang identifies
are an emphasis on performance versus mastery of knowledge, high-stakes testing and
evaluation, extrinsic versus intrinsic student motivation, and low expectations of success
among students (Cheating Lessons, chapter 2, pp. 18-35). Lang summarized his arguments
in an August 4, 2013 Boston Globe article provocatively titled “How College Classes
Encourage Cheating” available at http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/08/03/howcollege-classes-encourage-cheating/3Q34x5ysYcplWNA3yO2eLK/story.html. Ursinis
College Politics Professor Jonathan Marks’ criticism of Lang for, in Marks’ view, failing to
adequately address questions of character in cheating appeared in the Inside Higher
Education in October 2013. This article, like Lang’s Globe piece, could spur good classroom
discussion. Marks’ criticism is available online at
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/10/25/fight-against-cheating-character-countsessay#ixzz2jKDmt4xe.
c. Rutgers Management professor Donald McCabe, the grandfather of research on the
prevalence of college cheating, summarizes his research with collaborators Linda Kleve
Trevino and Kenneth D. Butterfield in “Cheating in Academic Institutions: A Decade of
Research” (Ethics & Behavior, 2001, volume 11, issue 3, pp. 219-232), which you can
download from the SU library website via Web of Science.
d. Data and trends in reports of academic integrity violations here at SU are available on our
website at http://academicintegrity.syr.edu/annual-reports/. The 2013-14 report will be
available soon. We are finalizing the data so as to include summer 2014 cases.
5. If you have ideas, comments, or additional material about academic integrity that you would like to
let us know about, please email it to aio@syr.edu. We will be posting additional articles on our
website over the course of the academic year.
Academic Integrity Office (AIO), Syracuse University, August 2014
6
For Discussion: Case Studies in Academic Integrity
Case 1: Johannes is taking a course in 20th century Latin American history. The class is conducted in
Spanish. Johannes has fallen behind in the class and hasn’t begun a 10-page essay due the next
morning. Stressed about the essay, Johannes stays up until 3 a.m. to finish a draft and emails it to
his mother, asking her to point out any grammar errors and suggest revisions to strengthen his
arguments. When Johannes wakes up at 9 a.m., he finds a reply email from his mom, incorporates
her suggestions, and turns the paper in on time at 11 a.m.
Is Johannes’ behavior academically dishonest? Does it violate SU’s AI policy? Would similar behavior
be permissible in your course? Why or why not?
What if all writing assignments for the class must be in Spanish, and Johannes’ mother is a native
Spanish speaker? Does this change anything? Why or why not?
What if Johannes’ mother has included a passage from a Spanish-language encyclopedia in the
revisions she sent to him without citation? Does this change anything? Why or why not?
Case 2: Emily is taking an upper-level political science class. Her professor asks students in the class
to write a critique summarizing their own views on the strengths and weaknesses of arguments
made by the author of a controversial new book on mass incarceration. Not knowing much about
the subject, Emily decides to gather ideas for her critique by going online. She finds and reads three
reviews of the book. Emily agrees with the views expressed by two of the reviewers and
incorporates their opinions into her critique. Because she is drawing on the reviewers’ opinions –
not facts – and because she agrees with those opinions, Emily does not cite the two reviews.
Is Emily’s behavior academically dishonest? Does it violate SU’s AI policy? Would similar behavior be
permissible in your course? Why or why not?
What if Emily disagrees strongly with one critique she reads and makes the opposite argument in her
own critique? Does anything change? Should Emily cite the critique she disagreed with?
Case 3: Four students who live in the same learning community take a large chemistry class. The
class breaks into small groups for labs, some of which are held on Mondays, others on Wednesdays.
Ashley, whose lab meets on Monday, lends Sam a copy of her lab report so that he will be prepared
for his lab on Wednesday.
Has Sam been academically dishonest? Has Ashley? Would similar behavior be permissible in your
course? Why or why not?
The Academic Integrity Office (AIO), Syracuse University, August 2014
7
Tools for Teaching Use of Sources
Introduction
The Harvard Guide to Using Sources and the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) are both excellent
resources for teaching use of sources to students.
The short exercises below ask students to demonstrate summarizing, paraphrasing, and using direct
quotations. You can provide your students with a short (1-2 page) academic text from any discipline to
use for these exercises. The exercises may be modified to conform to the text you provide. You may find
additional information on these topics on the Harvard Guide’s Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Quoting
webpage.
Exercises
Summarizing
A summary is a succinct overview of the most important parts of a source. Summaries should be brief
and contain necessary details only. Summarizes must always include citation.
Directions:
First, read the Harvard Guide’s section on summarizing. Next, read the text provided by your instructor
and write a brief summary. Ask yourself the following questions:
1. Who is my audience, and how much prior knowledge should I assume they have about this
source or subject?
2. What are the most important points in the text; what are the main points from the text that I
want to convey?
3. Have I correctly cited the source using my instructor’s preferred citation style?
Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing involves restating another person’s information and ideas in your own words. Your
wording must differ substantially from that of your source. Changing a word or even a few words is not
sufficient. Paraphrased material must always include citation.
Directions:
First, read the Harvard Guide’s section on paraphrasing. Next, read the text provided by your instructor
and paraphrase it. Ask yourself the following questions:
1. Have I completely and accurately restated all of the information presented in the original text?
2. Have I used only my own words?
3. Have I correctly cited the source using my instructor’s preferred citation style?
The Academic Integrity Office (AIO), Syracuse University, August 2014
8
Quoting
When you use a direct quotation, you are using the exact words from a source within your own writing.
Quotations should be used sparingly, and only when it is essential for your readers to see the original
words of the author. Quotations must always include citation.
Directions:
First, read the Harvard Guide’s section on quotation. Next, read the text provided by your instructor and
select a sentence or two that you think is essential. Ask yourself the following questions:
1. Does this quotation convey something that I am unable to convey by paraphrasing or
summarizing?
2. Did I use proper punctuation to indicate that I have quoted directly from a source?
3. Have I correctly cited the source using my instructor’s preferred citation style?
Works Cited
Harvard Guide to Using Sources. Harvard College Writing Program. Harvard College, 2014. Web. 30 July
2014.
The Purdue OWL Family of Sites. The Writing Lab and OWL at Purdue and Purdue U, 2014. Web. 30 July
2014.
The Academic Integrity Office (AIO), Syracuse University, August 2014