More than 10 years ago, the Smeal College of Business at Penn State launched the Smeal Honor Code as a supplement to the university’s existing academic integrity policy. Not only did the code underscore the values of the college, but it provided a means for students to hold each other accountable and for faculty to hold students accountable to academic integrity standards. The code also provided students with a foundation for developing an ethical mindset prior to entering the professional workplace.

Over time, the Honor Code has persisted and the college’s commitment to honor and integrity has evolved to include integrity standards outside of the classroom (e.g., in the job search), involving students, faculty, staff, and even alumni and recruiters. Although some of thes...

It's not easy to talk to people about their errors, whether those people are students who violated academic integrity or employees whose performance did not meet expectations. When people receive feedback they perceive as negative, criticism of a choice that was made, or simply have a less than positive experience, it "sticks in [their] minds" and they "just perseverate on it", according to Dr. Alison Ledgerwood of UC Davis.

I get this.

I had a fantastic childhood and loving parents, but when I narrate my most vivid childhood memories, they are often of those moments that I perceived as painful or negative at the time. I often wondered why my memory is better at retaining the negative than...

This is a different kind of post.

First, I want to announce that I have a new editorial team for the Integrity Matters! Blog. Joining me are Courtney Cullen (University of Georgia), Brenda Quaye (Miami University of Ohio), and Ceceilia Parnther (St. John's University). We've been discussing changes to the blog which we plan to roll out in August, so stay tuned for that.

Second, aligned with some of the changes we've been discussing, I want to try an experiment. So, for this post, I've enabled the comments section to see if we can start some interesting, respectful, honest, responsible, fair and trustworthy conversations in response to blog postings. I want to see if we get too many trolls or if our readers and members would find value in a f...

The Academic Integrity Office at the University of California, San Diego will be posting THREE new positions in the coming days: a Senior Case Coordinator, Case Coordinator, and an Education Coordinator. These positions were created, in part, as a result of some major policy and procedural changes to be implemented in the Fall 2019 quarter. (Keep an eye on academicintegrity.ucsd.edu this week for the job postings!)

While this is fantastic news, and I’m very excited about the changes coming forward this year, it also means that in less than 4 months, we have to ready a larger AI Office and the entire campus community to act according to the new procedures. Needless to say, as the primary lead on this chan...

I’m starting to get worried. While we wait for educational and governmental leaders to do something about contract cheating, the industry is expanding and the providers are becoming less ashamed and more brazen. Our silence is equaling permission and the contract cheating providers are seizing the opportunity to become legitimate.

To be sure, some educational and governmental leaders are doing something about contract cheating. In the UK, the Education Secretary asked PayPal and Google to refuse to ...

At the March 2019 ICAI Conference, the sessions were amazing. An important theme addressed in several sessions was the challenge in faculty consistently reporting academic authenticity violations.

What can be done to obtain faculty buy-in to follow campus policies?

While this theme of inconsistent faculty reporting is a concern in many institutions, Western Governors University (WGU) has effectively removed this barrier with a disaggregated faculty model. As part of the standard process, all student submissions at WGU go through a comprehensive originality review. The teaching faculty member does not evaluate any student work; instead, there is a separate team of faculty whose sole focus is rigorous, objective evaluation. WGU’s disaggregated model supports consis...

As I set about to write this blog post, it occurred to me that we haven't yet had any "news posts". The "news posts" are intended to highlight a news item (or multiple connected news items) that may have an impact on education and/or integrity but perhaps did not receive the attention and discussion it should have. So, I thought this week, it was time for a "news post".

In particular, I have four news pieces in mind that I think deserve our attention. I've resisted talking about these pieces because I didn't want to give the featured practices and companies any free advertising or airtime. However, I've come to realize that when those of us in the field of integrity/ethics are silent in response to these n...

Recently, an instructor was anonymously sent screenshots of a GroupMe chat for the course. The GroupMe for the class was initially created by the students to help share ideas and work together to understand the course content. Students are encouraged to study together to help them understand material and prepare for graded assignments but were specifically told to complete assignments individually. During an online quiz, some students corrupted the group by photographing their online quizzes and requesting assistance from their peers. Out of the large number of students enrolled in the course, the instructor could only report eight identifiable students. She could also only report the students shown on the screenshots that were shared from the anonymous student...

We are all by now aware of the recent “admissions scandal” in the United States. What you may not have heard, is that Lori Loughlin (one of the indicted) is claiming that she didn’t realize what they were doing was illegal. After all, she was simply paying a “consultant” to help her kids and it seems reasonable to assume that we should be abl...

Adelphi is modern metropolitan university on Long Island with a mix of colleges and professional schools. We have approximately 5,400 undergraduate students and 2,800 graduate students.

Our Committee for Academic Honesty is composed of equal numbers of students and faculty members, along with representatives from key University functions. The Committee is charged to promote an atmosphere of academic honesty, including the development and distribution of materials to promulgate the Code of Academic Honesty. A review of violation data over the past five years indicated that an upswing in academic honesty violations occurs beginning in week 10 of a 15-week semester. The Committee therefore created coordinated programming during week eight of the semester in an effort to raise aw...