Academic Integrity

“Nap time! Finally, I can sit down and get caught up on paperwork”, or so I thought. Just as I was about to read my kindergarten students’ homework journals, Devon asked to use the bathroom. While he was gone, I reviewed the papers. I loved reading about the students’ life lessons and looking at their attempts at art. Some papers I chuckled at, while others almost made me cry. (I worked in the poorest district in the state). While reading Devon’s paper I noticed that it looked very different. First, the handwriting was different and his drawing used a lot of pink! Now I understood his nervous behavior.

When Devon returned I called him to my desk. I mentioned the homework assignment, pointed at different pictures and asked him to explain them. After I reminded him about the Character Counts Trait “trustworthiness”, he started crying and confessed to putting his name on another student’s work. Although this incident involved a five year old, I took the time to talk with the entire class. I praised their individual strengths but told them that in order to get better they had to practice by doing their own work.

At grade-school level academic integrity can be introduced by teaching students about the importance of being honest through classes on ethics and character- building exercises. Cheating can be strongly discouraged by simply encouraging students to be confident in the knowledge that they already possess. Explaining the consequences of cheating can also be effective because most don’t want to be labeled “Cheater, Cheater Pumpkin Eater!”
College was the first time that I was strongly impacted by plagiarism. One classmate would party all night yet walk into class with a finished paper that he had conveniently purchased. This lack of academic integrity infuriated me since I work so hard and his bought assignment got the same or better grades. I became upset with the professor. Why didn’t he catch this plagiarism with all of the software tools available? After completing the Stephan Colbert plagiarism assignment, I understood why. For the assignment, I plagiarized 90% of my paper, yet the software only caught 43%.Obviously even the software is not fool proof.

I agree with using the software, but why should educators have to go behind students and check their work? We don’t have time to investigate every student’s paper. Sadly, students today want things fast and this makes them impatient. Why spend hours in library stacks when you can plagiarize within minutes? The increase development of technology makes cheating more appealing.

Academic integrity at the college level should involve showing students other options to plagiarism as opposed to relying on their morals. Research training is more beneficial at this level- Providing students with citation resources, giving systematic assignments which show growth and perhaps even group assignments would demand more individual accountability. Also, have students submit assignments to their school’s student services for review and a refresher Ethics class never hurts!

Inevitably, academic integrity is the student’s decision but hopefully with early exposure to ethics classes and research training we will have instilled enough academic confidence in students to encourage them to complete their own work.