End Note
Promoting academic integrity
By Dennis Organ
When I became a teacher at Harding 40 years ago, the topic of student cheating rarely came up in chats around the mimeograph machine and even less often, as I recall, in general faculty meetings. Over the years, that didn't change much, as faculty and administration kept an eye out for academic misconduct but considered serious cheating an infrequent occurrence.
 The situation was probably pretty much the same in other colleges and universities. But today's world is quite different - thanks to blurred ethical boundaries and ubiquitous tools such as computers and cell phones that make cheating easy and inviting.
Just as the call for stronger ethical standards has sounded in arenas as diverse as public accounting, professional sports and government, now educators everywhere are tuned in to the cause of academic integrity. The University is no exception. Although we've always supported integrity as part of Christian life, today we're more alert and more intentional in our actions. Three years ago we signaled our renewed interest by joining the Center for Academic Integrity, a consortium of several hundred institutions focused on doing a better job of promoting honesty on campus and dealing effectively and fairly with misconduct.
Our affiliation with CAI led to the appointment of a broad-based committee to study the academic integrity climate here and make recommendations. After a two-year process of research and discussion, this fall we've implemented a faculty-endorsed plan to improve the way we deal with academic violations. Most of all, however, the plan enjoins us to teach more about academic honesty, building on the Christian call to excellence in all aspects of our lives.
Early this fall the faculty participated in a training workshop on policies and procedures, as well as such strategies as teaching about plagiarism in their courses, and the student body heard a chapel presentation on academic integrity.
Finally, to encourage commitment to a high standard of ethics, we invited students to sign a statement - "I hereby pledge to God, to the Harding University academic community, and to myself that I will uphold godly standards of honesty, authenticity and accountability in all my undertakings" - and placed the hundreds of signed pledge slips in a special display case in the Administration Building as a symbol of that ideal.
It's an ideal I believe the student body sincerely embraces. Two especially interesting findings emerged from the CAI research survey we administered in 2005. One showed that our students said they engaged in various kinds of cheating at about the same rate as students nationally. The other indicated, however, that our students were more likely to regard those behaviors as serious cheating. I've told the faculty, only half joking, that this means our students cheat as much as others but feel worse about it. In the statistics I see evidence of tender consciences and willingness to do the right thing if the University holds up a clear and high standard. And that is what we intend to do with our renewed overt program to promote academic integrity.
Holding up a clear standard is not as simple as it sounds. I'm convinced that some cheating results from confusion about what's acceptable rather than from calculated dishonesty. Take, for example, the issue of collaboration. Much more than in the past, in colleges and departments all across our curriculum, faculty assign group work for projects and reports. Even in the individual skill of writing, English teachers often use peer critique sessions to help students revise their essays. When students are being told that they not only can, but also should, work with others on their assignments, they can be confused when penalized at other times for collaborating. Obviously, we teachers need to give explicit explanations about when and why collaboration is and is not acceptable in our courses.
Another point of confusion for today's students arises from the wonderful ease of accessing information electronically. The Internet is there, free for the taking; in this communal domain where authoritative gatekeepers lack power, anyone can post information, and anyone can retrieve it. So who should worry about giving credit for borrowed words, let alone borrowed ideas? Again, it's up to teachers to explain the ethics of scholarship and the concept of literary theft.
Clearly, countering the trend of increasing academic dishonesty will require much education about academic ethics, not only - and not primarily - more monitoring and punishment of offenses. Our main goal, then, is to create and promote a culture on campus that truly honors the elements of academic integrity named in our pledge: honesty, authenticity and accountability. In time, we want to make the University's reputation for academic integrity as familiar as its reputation for spiritual dedication and upright social behavior.
Dr. Dennis Organ ('66) received the Ph.D. from Texas Tech University. He is a professor of English and dean of the College of Arts and Humanities.
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