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The Daily OrangeAnd the chancellor said: Thou shall not cheat and the students obeyed
By Eric Meyers
Posted: 9/25/06, 11:54 PM EST Section: News
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This is a possible change in Syracuse University's academic integrity policy, one of several updates the university is currently going through.
In a recent survey conducted by the Vice Chancellor and Provost Committee on Academic Integrity, 11 percent of SU students admitted to cheating in the previous year, 53 percent of students said they wouldn't report cheating if they saw it and more than 70 percent admitted to at least one of 20 cheating behaviors.
The VCPAI has been working since the fall of 2004 to research and survey the state of academic integrity at SU, and on July 1, 2006, the completed policy went into effect. The new plan will be uniform across the entire university.
It also created an Academic Integrity Office to coordinate the policy's implementation, to create a database of infringements and to educate students and faculty about the policy.
The VCPAI has also suggested plagiarism-detection software, such as turnitin.com, to curtail cheating on written work. However, the plan has yet to go into effect.
This software will allow students to submit their papers to the Web site, which will check them for similarity to outside sources. The databases used include periodicals, reference materials, the Internet and many others. They also save the submitted work and check future submissions against it.
This service can be used by teachers to check all submissions, or it may be used by students to check that they have cited everything correctly.
When a student's paper enters the database, the student's identity is not on it. The paper's specific writer will remain anonymous, but if another teacher receives a paper that resembles it, they can contact the teacher who submitted it.
"It has to gel with Blackboard(.com), so we've had some implementation issues," said Elletta Sangrey Callahan, chair of the VCPAI and a professor of law and public policy.
She also said while the school considers implementing it, they need to have an open discussion with the students.
"The best thing is the fact that there is a single policy for all," Callahan said. "Unlike 11 different polices that make it difficult, consistent implementation is more fair in every way."
Previously, each college used a different policy for academic integrity, including different definitions of plagiarism or no definition at all.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Dan
posted 10/19/06 @ 6:17 AM EST
Absolutely eye-opening article with tons of proof. I had no idea how much Turnitin violates students' rights.
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