Читать книгу Cheating Academic Integrity - Группа авторов - Страница 18

Numerous studies in the past 30 years have examined interventions designed to prevent or detect plagiarism and cheating. Importantly, there is substantial evidence that academic integrity interventions have proliferated over this time. For example, the text‐matching software Turnitin™ went from 1 million submissions in 2002 to 500 million in 2014 (Turnitin.com, 2020). Stoesz and Yudintseva (2018) identified 21 studies of educational interventions (workshops and tutorials) designed to improve academic integrity reported in published literature between 1995 and 2016, and many of these describe sustained or ongoing interventions created in the last 30 years.

Rather than duplicate existing analyses, two excellent recent reviews of the literature on the effectiveness of academic integrity interventions capture most of the intervention studies in academic integrity literature in the past 30 years. In addition to Stoesz and Yudintseva's (2018) systematic review, mentioned above, Marusic et al. (2016) used the Cochrane methodology to assess interventions designed to promote research and publication integrity, which included many studies focused on reducing plagiarism. Additionally, three papers not cited in these reviews are particularly noteworthy, as they report studies that tracked academic integrity interventions over extended periods (Levine and Pazdernik, 2018; Owens and White, 2013; Perkins et al., 2020).

Academic integrity interventions in the past 30 years seem to come in one of four principal forms: 1) the implementation of honor codes designed to crystalize a shared understanding of acceptable behavior and influence students’ attitudes regarding plagiarism and cheating, 2) educational modules (classes, tutorials, online activities) designed to educate students about academic integrity and/or appropriate citation practices, 3) the use of text‐matching software, often accompanied by education to help students understand text‐matching reports and interpret differences between matched text and plagiarism, and 4) some combination of the above.

Although there has been strong advocacy for the use of honor codes to improve academic integrity, the evidence for their impact is often of limited quality. Studies reported by McCabe et al. (2002), for example, typically show a correlation between the use of honor codes and the prevalence of self‐reported plagiarism and cheating. However, any apparent impact of honor codes on rates of cheating may be a problem of self‐selection bias rather than an effect of the codes themselves (McCabe, 2016). In other words, institutions with honor codes may attract non‐cheating students or encourage under‐reporting of cheating by students. Still, there is some longitudinal evidence (i.e. with pre‐test and post‐test measures) that indicates that implementing honor codes makes students view cheating more negatively (e.g. Raman and Ramlogan, 2020). In addition, honor codes set expectations about standards of acceptable behavior, and studies indicate that academic integrity standards influence students’ misconduct behavior (e.g. Curtis et al., 2018). However, asking students to pledge to be honest before submitting assignments may not be enough to reduce misconduct. Evidence that simply making an ethical pledge before submitting work reduces cheating (Shu et al., 2012) has recently been found to have been based on fabricated data (Baskin, 2021). The best evidence for honor codes reducing cheating seems to be when students are regularly reminded about the codes (Tatum and Schwartz, 2017).

The evidence from reviews by Marusic et al. (2016) and Stoesz and Yudintseva (2018) indicates that training in citation skills and paraphrasing are generally helpful, albeit that the effects are modest. Marusic et al. (2016), in particular, concluded that training involving practical exercises and text‐matching software showed the most promise in reducing plagiarism (e.g. Barrett and Malcolm, 2006; Batane, 2010; Rolfe, 2011). Stoesz and Yudintseva (2018) concur that educational interventions, which may be automated and delivered online (e.g. Belter and Pré, 2009; Curtis et al. 2013) may be enhanced with hands‐on, in‐class experiences. These reviews suggest that anti‐cheating educational interventions may improve students’ attitudes toward integrity, not just their skills, thus having a similar effect to honor codes. However, the reviews generally conclude that skills‐based, rather than attitude‐based, interventions are more efficacious in reducing cheating and plagiarism.

As noted earlier, in addition to the reviews of academic integrity interventions, three studies have tracked academic integrity interventions over extended periods. These studies overlap in time over the period 2007–2019: 2007–2011 (Owens and While, 2013); 2010–2015 (Levine and Pazdernik, 2018); 2014–2019 (Perkins et al., 2020). In two of these studies, a variety of methods to improve academic integrity, including text‐matching software, structured educational modules, mastery tasks, and policy changes were used (Levine and Pazdernik, 2018; Owens and White, 2013). The third study focused solely on the impact of an academic English course (Perkins et al., 2020). All three studies examined cases of academic misconduct as their outcome, and all three studies found a significant reduction in cases over their five‐year durations. These studies reinforce the conclusions of the reviews by Marusic et al. (2016) and Stoesz and Yudintseva (2018) that skills‐based interventions, accompanied by text‐matching software, appear to be effective in reducing academic misconduct.

In summary, it appears that the evidence for skills‐based interventions and text‐matching software is more substantial and provides clearer demonstrations of impact than the implementation of honor codes. This conclusion accords with some important evidence that students often plagiarize because they do not know how not to plagiarize (Delvin and Gray, 2007). Moreover, only assuming academic integrity reflects honor, character, and morality fails to account for the fact that plagiarism can be inadvertent (Barnhardt, 2016; Mulholland, 2020). Taken together, it could be argued that students do not develop character, in the context of academic integrity, just by being told to be of good character; they must be taught how to be of good character. This is not to say that higher education should abandon honor codes as the evidence for their effectiveness in reducing cheating, especially when honor codes are regularly made salient, is persuasive (Tatum and Schwartz, 2017). However, it is, at least, important to accompany honor codes with the education students need in the practical skills of academic writing to allow them to meet the terms of these codes.