by Karen Hollingsworth Gardiner, College of Arts & Sciences I attended my first International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI) conference in 2016. Fellow attendees repeatedly recommended James Lang’s Cheating Lessons (Harvard U P, 2013), which I found so eye-opening that the next year I applied for and became a Learning in Action Fellow. What’s the
Category: Academic Integrity
Visited the A&S Academic Integrity Website Lately?
by Karen Hollingsworth Gardiner, College of Arts and Sciences Did you know that the College of Arts and Sciences has an Academic Integrity Initiatives website? Did you know that it is teeming with helpful information and links on a variety of Academic Integrity issues for both faculty and students? If you haven’t visited academicintegrity.as.ua.edu, then
Under Pressure: Four Ways to Enable Academic Integrity
by Alexandria Gholston, Department of English Imagine you are an Olympic athlete, and you are about to compete for your country. Imagine the pressure of having your family, friends, teammates, and your country all counting on you to represent them in front of the world. How would you handle such pressure? Would you fold, or
Living to See Another Day: Survival Through Academic Integrity
by Khadeidra N. Billingsley, Department of English In Imperial China, from the 17th to the early 20th century, individuals who wanted to pursue a career in civil service were required to pass a series of rigorous exams. These tests were only offered every few years and the results could literally change people’s lives. It goes
Teaching Citations as Part of the Writing Process: Student Voices
by Lauren Fleming, Undergraduate English Major Why do students violate University academic integrity policies? As an English major, I began to wonder about the root of this campus-wide issue. I am often subject to the woes of my non-English-major-but-still-have-writing-assignments peers and have noticed one common denominator: interactions with quotations and citations. Often, a conversation might
Solving the Patchwriting Problem, Part 3: Teaching Paraphrasing/Avoiding Patchwriting
by Karen Hollingsworth Gardiner, College of Arts & Sciences Merriam-Webster.org, considering whether or not “patchwriting” should be added to the dictionary, suggests that the concept is a gray area, a sort of “less judgmental midpoint that can be seen as a ‘teachable moment’ rather than an all-or-nothing accusation of plagiarism.” This is especially the case
Solving the Patchwriting Problem, Part 1: What is Patchwriting?
by Karen Hollingsworth Gardiner, College of Arts & Sciences In her 1992 Journal of Teaching Writing article “A Plagiarism Pentimento,” Rebecca Moore Howard coined the phrase “patchwriting” to describe the student practice of “copying from a source text and then deleting some words, altering grammatical structures, or plugging in one-for-one synonym substitutes” (233). An example
Solving the Patchwriting Problem, Part 2: What IS the Patchwriting Problem?
by Karen Hollingsworth Gardiner, College of Arts & Sciences In a previous post, “What is Patchwriting?” I included an early definition by Rebecca Moore Howard, who has continued to research and write about this issue for over twenty-five years. Her interest in plagiarism and student citation practices led her to conduct the seminal 2010-2013 Citation
Plagiarism-Proof Assignment?
by Karen Hollingsworth Gardiner, Academic Integrity Initatives It’s a catchy “click-bait” title: “Plagiarism-proof Assignments.” Unfortunately, it’s also a myth. There’s no such thing. If students intend to plagiarize, they will typically find a way, despite our best efforts. The good news is that most students don’t intend to plagiarize, and there are things we can
A&S Whiteboard Event Focuses on Contract Cheating
by Karen Hollingsworth Gardiner, Academic Integrity Initiatives What is Contract Cheating? Contract cheating is the dishonest academic practice of intentionally seeking work done by someone else and submitting it as one’s own, and according to Sarah Elaine Eaton of the University of Calgary, it is on the rise across the globe — a “black market