In 1997, Sally Scott asked “how much is enough” in her article “Accommodating College Students with Learning Disabilities: How Much is Enough?” Noting the need to strike a balance between the student’s needs and the academic integrity of the course, Scott argued for a creation of a dynamic nondiscriminatory standard that, it must be recognized, is both applicable in a given moment, but is also subject to revision and re-articulation as new needs and challenges arise. Her advice remains more relevant than ever. Given that 5-8% of students, regardless of the institution’s size, utilize an office of disability services in the US, and given that this rate only seems to be rising (at my school, the rate is clo...

We all face the same problem, and it’s a fairly intractable one. Incoming students don’t know enough about our local honor codes, the policies governing thresholds and processes regarding cheating or plagiarism, or why all of the above is important – but they also do not care about any of those things at precisely the only moment we have their attention; namely, as they undergo orientations and on boarding at their institutions.

In late October, we joined the Southeast Regional Conference to discuss how often institutions gamely try to use orientation to educate anyway. This cou...

The University of Calgary’s Werklund School of Education is launching a Master of Education Interdisciplinary four course topic (certificate or diploma) in academic integrity. The Master of Education Program is a fully accredited graduate program with a unique laddered structure in which students earn a credential after every four courses they complete. In the first two steps of the program, students choose from a selection of four-course topics. Those who wish to continue with a full Master of Education (MEd) degree can then complete additional research courses and a capstone project to complete their degree.

Here is an overview of the entire MEd Interdisciplinary program:
...

Students are mentored to study within an academic canon. We call them the classics, foundational theorists, tradition. But in doing so, what are we missing? The recycling of common themes is natural and expected. As a result, a relatively small set of researchers hold the key to how we frame and envision knowledge, both old and new. Education has, as a result, created specific rules of engagement that limit exploration and promote the status quo. What role does academic integrity play in expanding new ways of knowing?

Historical rules or theories go mostly unchecked, riddled with unconscious bias. This often continues until  a social m...

The rural influence is a vibrant, distinct educational environment that is underresearched, with few qualitative studies that provide a voice for the lived experiences of rural general education  high school teachers as they navigate the changing landscape of academic dishonesty.  I sought to address that issue in the study “Academic Dishonesty in the Digital Age- A Rural Perspective.”

The purpose of this hermeneutical phenomenological study was to describe high school general education...

 (Adorable and creative, not at all like the picture I actually drew)[/caption]

 

“Draw a picture of your house.” I remember hearing those words as a student. I paused before looking up and realizing that the instructor was indeed serious.

I giggled.

“Draw a picture of your house,” she said again. I cannot draw. I remember first mocking the instruction to myself, then looking at the blank paper. Feelings of shame, then fear emerged as I realized the time for the exercise slowly ticked away.

In a rush, I drew a shoddy representation of home. It was a quick blueprint with little personality and less heart.

The next instruc...

The cheating dilemma. To Faculty, reporting a case of academic dishonesty may seem like an ineffective time sink, but students see this as something to exploit. Some instructors believe that they have created a course where students are unable to cheat. This mentality or belief that you are too busy to educate your students may be why they are continuing to cheat in your class. 

If you are teaching this semester, when is the last time you looked up your class online? No, I’m not talking about the course number, but seeing what is out there on Quizlet, ...

In Year 1, my daughter was asked to make a desert diorama. She was barely six then. We received the home project question on a Thursday, as was the school’s practice to upload the home learning announcements then. I remember feeling apprehensive reading the details of the project. I remember having to look up the word “diorama”. I remember thinking, “Really? You are expecting my Year 1 child to make this model?”

From the beginning, I always encouraged my daughter to try to make her own projects, help where necessary (buying material, using hot glue gun, and such). I made it a point to appreciate her work, her poems, her spelling errors on her posters, her wiggly lines because they were done by her. But I also had to support her emotionally when she would make the effor...

Something known previously by a select few is getting serious attention of late - Kenya is a big player in the contract cheating industry. While certainly not all contract cheating providers reside in Kenya, there are signs that a great many of them do. Why? According to some sources, the country is rich with highly educated people who have few available employment opportunities...

In this week’s blog post, I want to highlight a worthy opinion published in the Gulf News by Dr. Jamal Sanad Al Suwaidi. 

Dr. Al-Suwaidi is a Nobel Prize nominated intellectual leader based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) whose most recent opinion piece lamented the problem of fake degrees in the Gulf region. Dr. Al-Swaidi accurately notes that the proliferation of fake degrees “reflects a serious moral crisis” created, in part, by the obsession that a degree (ra...