Key issues and practical needs relating to academic (mis)conduct

the MUN Academic Conduct Roundtable group

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[re-posted 2003. This material is from 2002; the hoped-for discussion did not materialise, perhaps it was the wrong phase of the moon, we'll try again]

(summary based on Kim's note May 16, 2002)

Hi everyone again,

Further to Eileen's message and good news, we hope to keep this fluid and flexible, and think of it as an ad-hoc and open roundtable to encourage everyone to contribute and guide. We hope this will lead to enhancement of MUN's policy and procedure.

We shall meet some time in the next week and bring together some of what Eileen has already rounded up and any other ideas that are contributed.

So this is an invitation to contribute your thoughts, either via e-mail or (if it fits with your schedule) by joining in a brief meeting at a time to be determined. You are welcome to forward this message to any staff you think would be interested.

At the risk of some repetition, some thoughts on key aspects and practical needs. Comments and further thoughts from all welcome.

KEY ISSUES AND PRACTICAL NEEDS

Re PLAGIARISM per se (including bogus reference lists)     contents

1. some protocols for judging what constitutes adequate evidence of misconduct (e.g., what about cases where the level exceeds anything reasonably expected from that student given previous assignments?). Is it possible to make a scoresheet that quantifies unoriginality and provides objective reference for it? I'll remark that I was very impressed by how many short sentences and phrases do NOT exist on the web, even with the tremendous volume of material indexed; this may provide a way toward a benchmark reference originality.
2. how much, if any, plagiarism is tolerable? (e.g. how different is an essay that has nearby but inexplicit credit for a lifted sentence lacking quote marks ... or one that few plagiarised lines, from one that is mostly plagiarised lines?) If sources for some text are located, is there any basis for a claim that the rest of the assignment is original (e.g., if x% of the jewellery in this bag is identifiable as stolen, shouldn't we then shift the burden of proof to the criminal to show receipts for the rest? ... i.e. isn't it naïve to not treat it all as stolen?).
3. what penalties are appropriate? Compared to a zero for simply not doing an assignment, isn't a zero for dishonesty a bit on the generous side?
4. what should appear on the student's permanent record? E.g., if a mark of dishonesty (suspension) vanishes from the transcript, is a mark of dishonesty less meaningful than an anomalous C grade?
5. a reliable way of getting the message out as a deterrent - and this might include promulgation of penalties given over time.
6. assembly of some incident histories at MUN -- perhaps we could achieve this through a voluntary questionnaire offered via MUN Newsline -- any suggestions on appropriate questions and how (or how else) to implement this?
7. some discussion should take place on the Procedures - particularly the "informal" process under Section X (page 60), which contains no protocol for recording incidents so that we can track repeat offenders. Database is required.
8. explore options for using electronic (time-saving) plagiarism checking. There are some services, and we probably (as a University) should locate the best solution to increase detection rates
9. as Eileen and Donna pointed out, many students are under pressure, though nobody thinks this excuses plagiarism and cheating (because the students who keep clean are presumably under the same pressure). However we probably should keep mindful of pressures to perform, especially where plagiarised assigments have (supposing there are instances where this is the case) the appearance of gaining better marks. Automated services for checking could help eliminate such instances.

Re OUTSIDE HELP, e.g. "TERM PAPERS -- EDITING AND PROOFREADING for Humanities and Social Sciences (Anthro, Socio, Philo, English, etc.)" services (from an advertisement on a notice board on campus).     contents

Are these legitimate? Given that the calendar (p58 section 3) provides explicitly for marks to reflect in part the level of expression including spelling and grammar, the use of such services may allow students to purchase advantage. In some cases some might argue in favour of such help, for instance for students working in English as a second language. Would it be reasonable to require (under Section X) students to obtain advance permission for such help, or/and to require that all such help be declared on the cover sheet of any submission, whether it be essay or term paper, with failure to so document being academic misconduct? It could also be made an academic offence for any person (student or staff) to render such assistance without also independently notifying the course professor, or the Registrar (a simple web site notification, or a simple form dropped in internal mail). How much help is too much? What kind of help is the wrong kind? These questions are critical to managing this situation.

Re PRESUMPTION OF AWARENESS     contents

Either awareness is reasonable to presume, or there needs to be a process that will lead to it being reasonable to presume. For instance, a standard policy being widely posted, and/or referred to at the outset of each first-year course. This would get us away from the 'first-offence' syndrome. My web site (www.ucs.mun.ca/~kbell/ and follow link) contains a page on plagiarism etc., and links to pages elsewhere.

Re EXAMS and tests     contents

1. Are there possibilities, other than direct observation, for detecting cheating? Some people note similarities in answers, especially in wrong answers. Detection is made easier by taking seat positions (should all fixed seating be numbered to facilitate this?).
2. Similarities can be very informative in essay answers, but in multiple-choice questions the probability (assuming random choice) is quite high of picking the same incorrect response as a neighbour. Could anyone from the stats department suggest appropriate testing that would integrate all responses on an exam and find patterns that allow individual cases to be identified with acceptably small probability of Type II error (accusing an innocent but unlucky person)?

Re standard excuses like "We studied together"     contents

1. It might be useful to catalog all the excuses offered, and determine whether prior advice could clarify the situation and forestall having to deal with these. E.g., in exams the way I plan to deal with "We studied together" is to place the obligation on students to not sit near people they studied with … i.e. remarkable commonality of response in adjacent papers will be attributed first to copying, not first to such excuses.

Re FACULTY conduct issues     contents

Some universities have encountered problems with faculty plagiarism. A clear policy has positive implications for the acceptance of rules and procedures affecting students.

Faculty need to be seen to act consistently with the rules.

Regarding course notes prepared by faculty: Many faculty offer their course notes to others to adjust and use - there is the benefit of continuity and consistency, and no particular credit is claimed (usually) for these. Do we need a policy on this in order to prevent confusion? - perhaps it would require no more than a documentation and considered approval of current practice. It is critically important that we avoid the appearance of a double standard. Therefore we need to document current practise, and harvest opinions on how best to frame this. Some sets of notes (e.g. in introductory classes) are almost anonymous because they are developed by a committee over time. It would of course be improper to explicitly claim credit for notes without citing the source, or without the approval of the source, but maybe to avoid an implicit claim a disclaimer like 'notes in this course have evolved over time and reflect the contribution of many individuals who approve of this use' would help set an example for students.

I add [030320] that we have a similar problem with most texts that we use, in which information is presented without references (and incidentally, touching on another issue, data or graphs are presented without concession to statistical arbitration). Maybe we could find texts that (a) reference their material and (b) weave statistical inferential standards into the data that are presented.

We look forward to hearing from you.                                                      contents

Kim and Eileen

(KNI Bell, <kbell@mun.ca>, 737-7496 [now 737-4440];
E Bragg, <ebragg@mun.ca>, 737-8629)