Faculty Focus

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cheating in online classes

Do’s and Don’ts for Promoting Academic Integrity

Donald McCabe’ s 2005 article “Cheating Among College And University Students: A North American Perspective” is often cited for its sobering statistics regarding the prevalence of cheating in higher education.

The numbers are alarming and do require a serious response, but have you ever turned the numbers upside down? For example, if 42 percent of college students admit to working with others on individual assignments, that means 58 percent aren’t getting help from others and those students would like you to do something about the 42 percent. If 38 percent admit to plagiarizing, that means 62 percent aren’t plagiarizing and those students expect you to do something about the 38 percent.

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Tips for Preventing Plagiarism among College Students

For some students, a writing assignment takes weeks of research, writing and revisions. For others, the ingredients are more along the lines of Google, CTRL+C and CTRL+V. And for others still, the assignment is nothing more than a transaction with an online essay mill.

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Turnitin Study Examines ‘Copy and Paste’ Plagiarism

When students need to write a paper, where do they go? A study released last month on plagiarism found that social and user-generated websites are the most popular resources, followed by academic and homework-related sites. Cheat sites and paper mills comprised less than 15 percent of the total resources used and showed the most significant decline over the period examined.

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Academic Dishonesty: How to Mitigate Student Cheating

As an accreditation evaluator for the Northwest Commission of Colleges and Universities (NWCCU), Scott L. Howell, PhD goes out a couple of times each year to review the testing practices and assessment characteristics of higher education institutions that are under the NWCCU’s purview.

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