Academic integrity in courses continues to be a serious concern in academe; students here and elsewhere cheat, plagiarize, and make unauthorized multiple submissions of academic assignments. The issue of academic integrity has also been brought to the public’s attention in the last several years in very negative ways, for example by some articles in Macleans magazine. However, York University has policies and processes in place to diminish ‘fraud’ in academic activities (see for example, the Senate Policy on Academic Honesty).

Unfortunately, some York students breach Academic Honesty regulations, as evidenced by the continual posting of ‘Essay Help Services’ notices across the campus (if they didn’t have clients they would go out of business!) and many students are charged and found guilty of a variety of academic offences each year. It may be that some of these students are new to the university ethos concerning academic integrity, and don’t know or understand our expectations; others may need to be reminded of our concerns and our vigilance.

Given that academic dishonesty occurs at York, what can be done to encourage students to observe academic honesty regulations and what can instructors, tutorial leaders, etc., do to enhance academic integrity in courses at York University?

Clearly, first year students need to be instructed in appropriate academic practice, as we cannot assume such instruction in their previous education. But we also see upper year students being charged with a breach of academic honesty. Therefore education and vigilance of all of our students, from first year undergraduates to senior PhD candidates, must be an ongoing activity.

Recognizing that students require instruction in appropriate academic practices is the first step. This needs to be followed by developing a strategy to educate your students. One approach to this is to fully inform students of your expectations in the first lecture of each course, and at appropriate intervals thereafter. While one ‘tool’ or mechanism may be helpful as part of the educational process, it is likely that several approaches will provide for the best outcome. Several of these, but by no means all, are outlined in the updated information below:

The academic Integrity pamphlet for students – ‘Beware – Says who? Avoiding plagiarism’ - updated

It is essential that all personnel involved in assessing student assignments (faculty, demonstrators, tutorial leaders, etc) educate their students in appropriate academic practices. Providing a variety of means to assist teachers in educating students is also essential. To support this necessity the document – ‘Beware – Says who? Avoiding plagiarism’ was developed last year and has been updated for this year. The document describes what academic integrity and intellectual property rights are, the definition of plagiarism with several examples, pressures that lead to plagiarism and how to avoid it, good practices with examples, etc. Instructors can readily draw students’ attention to the principles of academic integrity by giving students a copy of the pamphlet, which is attached as a pdf to this message, in course kits, course handouts, etc. This will not only enhance academic integrity and help educate students to avoid plagiarism, it may result in fewer students cheating. In turn, it may diminish the number of students that a faculty member might face with the distasteful task of interviewing over submissions that may constitute a breach of academic integrity. The pdf will also be available through the AI web site.

One positive approach to educating our students on the principles and appropriate academic practices in courses is to have an open discussion with your students, and, where appropriate, your tutorial leaders, TAs, etc., on your clear expectations of academic integrity in your course(s). To reinforce your points and to cement an understanding of appropriate practices you may request your students to go to the Academic Integrity web site at York University, to read the section ‘For Students’, and to complete the Academic Integrity Tutorial. This approach would be most beneficial if all first year students were required as part of their course to complete the Academic Integrity Tutorial.

The tutorial, which is in the process of being upgraded (hopefully available by early September) is designed to help students learn about central aspects of academic integrity. It explores plagiarism and related matters with excellent examples and supportive strategies that will aid students in their academic endeavours while helping them avoid breaching the Senate Policy on Academic Honesty. The tutorial web site also provides some excellent suggestions for incorporating the tutorial in courses.

Instructors teaching courses can request students to show proof of having taken the tutorial. As indicated on the ‘Quiz Instructions’ site, “If you [a student] are completing the quiz as part of a class assignment, use the Print command from your web browser to print several copies of the results page. Hand one in to your instructor, and keep the extras with your own records”. Additionally, there is a process for Online Tracking & Reporting; instructors can arrange to get statistics and reports for their course/courses (call the Centre for the Support of Teaching (CST) if you need help). This process may be accomplished online.

If a student has completed the online tutorial, there will be a record. Therefore, students would not be required to complete the tutorial more than once and instructors can determine which students in their class have completed the tutorial. Moreover, once an instructor knows a student has completed the tutorial, they can expect that students will be better prepared to meet the required level of academic integrity.

In the most recent year (September 07/08), there were 55,503 attempts at the tutorial where 13,973 unique York students successfully completed it. This result points to the success of the program in aiding instruction of students in appropriate academic practices. Moreover, the tutorial is being used in its entirety at many national and international universities, and a host of Canadian and international universities and colleges have links to the York Academic Integrity site.

Once again, it is highly recommended that course directors require all students, especially those in first year courses, to complete the Academic Integrity Tutorial.

However, the tutorial is a primer; it is not comprehensive, nor does it cover all areas of academe. Therefore, it is all the more important that instructors follow up to ensure their expectation of ethical behaviour in courses is being met by undergraduates and graduate students at all levels. Additionally, the continual reinforcement of appropriate academic practice should result in fewer students breaching academic honesty regulations; that in turn will ease instructors of the added responsibility of following up and, where needed, charging students with breach of academic honesty.

Turnitin.com, a text matching service available to instructors, is recognized as a valuable tool that can be used to promote academic honesty and help students avoid plagiarism. Turnitin.com is an Internet-based service that scans submitted works for similarity to material that may have been copied from public web-sites, etc., including essays and assignments submitted previously to Turnitin.com. The service is able to detect strings of words as short as eight in its digital data base.

Sections of a submission to Turnitin.com that are present in the data base are outlined in colour in an ‘originality report’ to the professor/instructor in a course. If students are allowed to use Turnitin.com to scan their papers, they too will see the results in living colour! Although Turnitin.com is often seen as a means of catching students submitting plagiarized materials, which it can do and do well, Turnitin.com can be very helpful in instructing students in appropriate academic practice. For example, the inclusion of two sentences copied verbatim from elsewhere that are in the data base will be revealed. If the sentences are not referenced/quoted in the appropriate manner, the student submitting the material can learn that this is not appropriate practice. Similarly, Turnitin.com can be used by students as a tool to educate them on academic integrity. This is well illustrated by the extensive use made of Turnitin.com by faculty teaching in the BScN for Internationally Educated Nurses (IENs) Program, which was featured in the TEL@York conference in 2007. The use of Turnitin.com in the program may be viewed by clicking here. (if you do not have the Windows Media Port25 Plugin for Firefox you may press ‘continue without plugin’ and press the box labelled ‘continue’).

Thus Turnitin.com may be used to advantage to further educate students as to what is or is not appropriate academic practice.

What text matching software does not do is determine whether or not plagiarism occurred; the determination of a potential breach of academic honesty and the decision to proceed with a charge is made by the course director or person designated by Faculty policy (see The Senate Policy on Academic Honesty, section 3.4.5). The use of a text matching service is but an aid to the instructor in the normal process of assessing, marking and grading assignments in courses.

Turnitin.com usage continues to grow at York. For the period September 1, 2007 to August 1, 2008 (September 1, 2006 to August 31, 2007 data in parentheses) Turnitin.com was used by 248 (171) instructors whose 14,394 (11,158) students submitted 26,234 (20,949) assignments to Turnitin.com, which generated 26,126 (20,943) originality reports.

With recent changes to the guidelines for the use of text-matching software, instructors may request students to submit assignments to text-matching software to aid in verification of the originality of student assignments and/or as a learning tool that students may use to avoid inadvertent plagiarism. On the other hand, to balance the concerns of some people, a student has the right to not comply with such a request i.e. to opt out. However, if a student chooses to opt out instructors can require students to undertake additional tasks, such as submitting multiple drafts, taking an oral examination directed at issues of originality, etc. This process is likely to help ensure that students complete all the submitted work themselves, and that assignments are not obtained from other sources such as an ‘essay writing service’.

One of the requirements for the use of text matching software is that at the outset of a course, students shall be informed that text-matching software will be used in the course and advised of the opt-out provisions available to them. Here are details of the Access to Turnitin.com is provided to any instructor who wishes to use it.The use of Turnitin.com is well supported at York with the CST and the Faculty Support Centre being able to provide assistance and instruction in the use of the service.

Librarians at York perform a variety of very important functions for the support of the institution including providing instruction to students on information literacy and research methods. These sessions are a valuable service to students and instructors alike, and serve also to enhance academic integrity. These sessions, which are especially useful for students in the second year level and up, can take place in the library or in the classroom and may be arranged by contacting the liaison librarian in the appropriate area. The library webpage on “Information on Academic Integrity“ also provides a variety of resources that are very helpful to instructors in this effort.

Instructors may wish to incorporate some of the suggestions outlined above into their courses. While this may be done at any time in a course, it is best to introduce these as requests, or requirements where appropriate, at the beginning of a course. Moreover, it is good practice to include these in the course outline at the very beginning of a course so that all students will be aware of the importance that the University and the course director/instructor place on academic integrity. Additionally, the Senate Committee on Curriculum and Academic Standards requires that certain core information be included in course outlines; this includes reference to Academic Honesty/Integrity(pdf).

The Academic Integrity Working Group is always ready to discuss issues of academic integrity and its current members are ever ready to visit Faculty Council Meetings and departmental meetings to help facilitate discussions.

The Academic Integrity web-site provides a variety of ‘tools’ and suggestions for processes by which the academic integrity in courses and thus the academic reputation of the University may be enhanced. Instructors are critical in supporting academic integrity by teaching their students appropriate academic practices and working with their students to ensure a high level of academic integrity in courses. These include utilizing the Academic Integrity Tutorial, using the features of Turnitin.com as a teaching and learning ‘tool’, accessing the services of the Library and using some or many of the other processes and ‘tools’ outlined in the Academic Integrity web site. No matter what method and/or processes an instructor chooses to use, it is best to incorporate reference to academic integrity and, where appropriate, processes that may be used, into the course outline and thereby encourage high standards in academic integrity.

Your help in this important matter is most appreciated.

Sincerely,

Rodney A. Webb, PhD
Professor and Associate VP Academic