Researching Grants and Awards

About Finding Funding…

The previous blog entries have helped me to develop a theory and set of best practices for approaching academic dishonesty and I have built a list of sources for continuing my education about the issue. Now the only question that remains is “How do I fund a professional development collection and an expansion of library services that would allow me to utilize the knowledge I have gained?” My goal for this final component of the project was to generate enough funding to start my own (theoretical) “ethical information use” program.

This is the end of my research journey and this will be the final blog post. However, if you are interested in reading more you can check out my personal reflections about this entire experience by clicking on the “Final Project Reflections” tab in the menu above.

Key Highlights:

Funding Source #1

Photo from the grant website of Carroll Preston Baber.

Grant Name: Carroll Preston Baber Research Grant

Grant Amount: Up to $3,000

Grant Website: http://www.ala.org/awardsgrants/awards/55/apply

The Carroll Preston Baber Research Grant was created to fund research projects that answer “vital” questions in librarianship and are focused on the improvement of service delivery to any type of population. Understanding why students cheat and how to discourage this practice is central to the job duties of an instruction librarian. The practice of cheating is a universal issue affecting colleges worldwide.  

Funding Source #2

Image from the grant website.

Award Name: ProQuest Innovation in College Librarianship Award

Award Amount: $3,000 award in one lump sum; this award is given out on an annual basis.

Award Website: http://www.ala.org/awardsgrants/awards/338/apply

This award provides funding to librarians to support their work on continuing projects or recognize ones that have already taken place. The RFP does not specify how the librarian is to use the funding once it is received. Instead, its intention is to honor librarians that have improved library services for undergraduates or faculty members using innovative measures. This would be the perfect award for libraries that are digitizing their information literacy courses or are finding new ways of discouraging cheating and encourage library use with technology. Though the funding would not be used to start a project, it could be used to expand one, continue its momentum, or replace funding that was reallocated for the purposes of the project. 

Funding Source #3

Image from the grant website.

Grant Name: Sparks! Ignition Grants for Libraries

Grant Amount: $10,000 to $25,000

Grant Website: http://www.imls.gov/applicants/detail.aspx?GrantId=19

The intention of the grant is support the testing out of innovative ideas that intend to solve common problems that libraries face. The proposal is intentionally broad to allow for many solutions to many different issues. However, it is stressed that the problems applicants present must be generalizable to other libraries of that type, rather than one specific to a single institution. Likewise, the funding agency seeks innovations that can feasibly be applied to many different libraries, rather than solutions that are proprietary in nature. The intent is to encourage new ideas and solutions that benefit the field as a whole.

Funding Source #4

Image from the grant website.

Grant Database’s Name: Grants.gov

Database Website: http://www.grants.gov/

Grants.gov offers a wide variety of grants from various national and state agencies. Users can choose to search for open grants, closed grants, or archived grants and can search by the type of agency or funding category. Grants.gov is free to browse unlike other grant databases (like Foundation Center) that require a subscription. Additionally, many of the grants on the database require that users apply through the Grants.gov interface, rather than through the parent institution.

Brief Reflections:

Funding. The very word that strikes fear into the hearts of even the most steadfast of librarians. Coming from a public library background, I was honestly not sure where to begin to look for funding in an academic setting. I had done a bit of grant research for another course this semester for a public library and after having a bit of difficulty, I was told by one of my librarian contacts that some systems are not allowed to apply for outside funding, but rather must take what they can get from the general fund they are allotted each year. I wondered if the same could be true for college libraries. Were academic libraries limited to the funds granted by their institutions?

I had extreme difficulty finding a single grant that would support academic honesty efforts. Evidence was beginning to support my theory that college libraries could be limited as to what they were allowed to apply for. When looking on the Association of College and Research Libraries website, I noticed all of the funding was in the form of an award, rather than a grant. These awards were for recognition of excellent programs already in place and were not intended to fund new research or services.

When searching for “information literacy” grants, the only thing I could seem to find were grants issued from the library to professors and students on campus. I was unable to find any grants of this type that were being issued to libraries instead.

It was a very frustrating process. Eventually, I just settled for including grants that had vague premises and could apply to any topic. It is also possible that the reason I did not find any directly applicable grants is because preserving academic standards is often viewed as part of an academic librarian’s regular job duties, rather than a special program. Perhaps the fault was with my search terms. It is possible that not having an academic background, I was using the wrong terminology when attempting to find funding for academic honesty programs.

Whatever the case, it seems that in order to obtain funding for these types of programs, librarians must think “outside the box” and consider more general requests for proposals or find ways that their programs could be stretched to fit grants in other categories. Who knew that finding funding for such an important area of research would be so difficult? 

 
Discussion Questions:

How does your library find funding for ethics or information literacy programs? Is there a particular funding source that I am neglecting? If you were given funding to expand your efforts to promote academic honesty, what type of program would you conduct?

See the entire grant report behind the cut!

Exploring Academic Honesty Websites

About the Academic Honesty Collection (Part 2)…

Continuing with the collection development series (see the previous post for part 1), for this post I plan to cover electronic-based sources that provide guidance on the subject of academic integrity. Unlike the previous set of sources, the websites I have included in this segment are meant for a variety of different audiences, not just teachers and librarians. I selected one resource specifically for students because I liked the idea of having a user-friendly site to refer them to when they were doing coursework outside of the library. Another website I chose seemed to be the perfect fit for lesson planning. The remaining two sites I found were excellent places to discuss honesty ethics with like-minded scholars. Are there any websites or other electronic sources I may have missed that you feel would be a good fit for an academic honesty collection? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Key Highlights:

Website #1

Asia Pacific Forum on Educational Integrity (APFEI): http://apfei.edu.au/

The purpose of APFEI is to serve as a reference point for scholars interested in studying and preserving academic honesty at their institutions. The site has many informational resources for academics, including: a research journal, a discussion forum where scholars can discuss academic integrity topics with one another, a bibliography with reading recommendations, full access to previous conference materials, current case studies, and access to their unique, multi-disciplinary “Academic Integrity Standards” project, in which the association is attempting to create a standardized approach to forming academic honesty practices and policies.

Website #2

PlagiarismAdvice.org: http://plagiarismadvice.org/

This website is intended for individuals working in the education industry who are looking for practical advice surrounding plagiarism and information ethics. The webpage offers a variety of informational content such as a video webinar series, journal articles with advice for engaging students or creating well-written honesty policies, and teacher resources about assessment and cheating detection technology use.

Website #3

Plagiarism.org: http://www.plagiarism.org/

This website is intended for students or those who need to brush up on their citation skills. The site explains the basics of recognizing and preventing plagiarism in a series of easy-to-follow lessons. There is also an “Ask the Experts” section of the site where students have their copyright and plagiarism questions answered (for example, this month’s question is about what is considered “common knowledge” when writing a paper). The website also offers some additional resources like webcasts, additional helpful webpages, and news stories about academic honesty and current events.

Website #4

National Center for Professional and Research Ethics: Ethics Collaborative Online Resource Environment (Ethics CORE): https://nationalethicscenter.org

Ethics CORE is meant to serve as an online environment where members can post white papers, opinion pieces, encyclopedia entries, resource links, answers, and interactive lessons about topics within the area of research ethics (this includes academic honesty). The site is loosely monitored monthly to ensure only topical information is posted. Ethics CORE is meant to be a community-based group of resources that individuals can use in the classroom or as a place to turn to when attempting to solve complex ethical dilemmas via recommended best practices from scholars in the field.

Brief Reflections:

While I think that it is important to have a list of print-based sources to draw from, online sources are usually far cheaper (all of the ones I have included are free to access) and are updated more often. I also like the amount of interactivity that websites can have. Both the Ethics Core and APFEI sites have a forum where scholars from around the world can discuss solutions to complicated ethical problems together. This is part of the reason I chose to format my final project as a blog rather than, say, an informative presentation. I am hoping to prompt a discussion within the profession. I am looking forward to the experience and wisdom that other librarians can bring so that I may be able to form my own ethical opinion about how to deal with dishonesty in academia.

Discussion Questions:

Which of these websites do you think would be most useful to you in your everyday practices? Are there other web sources you use on a regular basis to help you answer ethical questions? Do you personally prefer print sources or web sources? Why?

See the entire website suggestions assignment below the cut!

Developing a Collection

About the Academic Ethics Collection (Part 1)…

Thus far in this ethics blog I have examined theories and influences that could explain student dishonesty, looked into current research about cheating deterrents, and consulted an academic librarian about her experiences with maintaining academic standards. Even having all of these to work from, I thought that perhaps it might be wise to develop my own professional development collection of sources that I could consult when honesty ethics issues came up in my career. In addition, I wanted to choose items that would complement workplace staff collections so that I could suggest their eventual funding to my library director. I hope you will find these sources interesting and enlightening as well!

For the next two blog posts, I will be featuring print and online materials that deal with academic honesty and are specifically written for librarians and educators. I chose these items based on their reviews, publisher, and author(s) (and you can find out more about these justifications below the cut). Let me know in the comments if you added any of them to your own collection or if you have items you would personally recommend on this subject.

Key Highlights:

Print Item #1

Lang, James. 2013. Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Cheating Lessons seeks to assist readers in understanding and addressing the problem of academic dishonesty at its core. Lang (2013) examines the deeper, underlying reasons behind why college students choose to cheat. By using his own research, established cognitive theories, and case studies, the author reveals ethical, psychological, and sociological motivators. Through his research, the author discovered that educational environments are often accidentally designed in such a way that encourages cheating. Through this understanding of planning flaws and hidden motivators, Lang provides a framework of intervention strategies that educators and librarians can use to take the incentive out of cheating.

 Print Item #2

Lampert, Lynn D. 2008. Combating Student Plagiarism: An Academic Librarian's Guide. Oxford: Chandos Publishing Limited.

Combating Student Plagiarism provides a practical approach to academic dishonesty that is geared specifically toward academic librarians. Unlike the first resource that takes an extensive look at theory, this text is more of a manual that identifies common cheating situations within the academic library and provides step-by-step solutions specifically for librarians based on research articles.

Item #3 – Serials Item

Journal of Academic Ethics. Netherlands: Springer. Accessed Feb. 6, 2015. http://link.springer.com/journal/10805.  

The Journal of Academic Ethics provides peer-reviewed articles about many ethical dilemmas facing scholars in academic environments. While the journal does not specifically cater to questions of academic honesty, over one hundred articles were found within the journal that addressed the concept of cheating and honesty policies. It is likely to prove invaluable to the librarian looking for professional development and guidance when dealing with difficult ethical situations.

Brief Reflections:

I was actually pleasantly surprised by the number of materials available on the subject of academic honesty. Many of them, (like Combating Student Plagiarism listed above,) provided a detailed list of best practices a librarian could use when dealing with honesty violations. While it is important to build a theory for your practices and consult mentors, I think it is just as important to keep up on ethics research and have a reference you can go to when conflicts do arise. As I have discovered throughout this process, academic honesty is a complicated issue! I want to be able to arm myself with as much knowledge as I can before starting my career. I think that it is also helpful to keep notes or a list of best practices that can be referred to from time to time. Thinking about ethics takes a conscious effort and I feel part of my duty as a future librarian is to ensure that my ethical stance does not conflict with delivering the best service I can to my patrons. I also feel that it is important to continue researching and reading. There are constantly new theories and research developments in the field of academic ethics. I hope I never stop learning! 

Discussion Questions:

Which of these sources did you find to be the most useful? Do you have any go-to sources you use frequently when making ethical decisions? How did you develop your own list of best practices? Did you consult a colleague, a theory, or a particular source?

See the entire collection suggestions paper behind the cut!

Interviewing an Ethical Librarian

About the Librarian…

So far in this blog series I have looked at the findings of researchers and waxed philosophical about psychological motivations. I have built a solid foundation for the theories behind why students plagiarize or cheat, but in order to apply it to the field I felt that an expert opinion was needed. I wanted to know how a librarian who was actually working with students on a daily basis dealt with academic dishonesty. Did she agree with the theories I had discovered? Did her approach match the conclusions I had made in previous postings?

To protect the privacy of the librarian I interviewed, I agreed to keep her name and institution anonymous. Thus, you will not be seeing a citation at the end of this particular post. Needless to say, I selected this librarian carefully based on the fact that her institution served distance education students. None of the previous sources I had examined explored the idea of academic dishonesty in online learning environments. I was curious to see if the librarian saw a difference in the number of integrity violations between her distance and on-campus students. If so, I was interested to see if she had any suggestions for maintaining honesty standards with online students.

Key Highlights:

An opinion that I found particularly intriguing (and potentially controversial) was the idea that faculty members can unintentionally encourage cheating through poor practices. The librarian cited the example of an instructor creating a PowerPoint presentation and using images to “liven” it up without citing the sources they were drawn from. Perhaps my favorite quote from the interview was “It is so easy not to set a good example, but librarians and teachers need to be mindful of always setting a good example in everything they produce” (personal communication 2015).

Under the question "What do you think are the three main ethical problems in academic librarianship?" my interviewee noted that one of the problems she felt that was most pressing in the academic realm was patron privacy. Coming from a public library background, I had always thought of privacy in terms of patron information (their address, phone number, checkout information, etc.), but my interviewee opened my eyes to other considerations of what this could mean in an academic setting. She noted that universities and colleges were often very competitive environments and that it was important to train staff and student volunteers to keep research requests private, because faculty and dissertation students wanted to keep their original research private until it was published. I had not thought of privacy in that context before.

Another interesting thing that my contact noted when asked “What were your considerations when developing your institution’s honesty policy?” was that she and the rest of her staff noticed that many of the academic honesty violations were being committed by international transfer students and faculty members. As it turns out, she discovered that the copyright laws and academic standards in other countries could vary widely and that the violators were often unaware of the difference in expectations. As a result, the university developed special information literacy sessions specifically geared at international students. I had never considered cultural differences and how this may add to the perception of what constitutes unethical behavior or academic dishonesty.

My contact said that her biggest piece of advice for new librarians would be to create an attitude of professionalism by treating this job as if you were a healthcare provider. In other words, she would ask the new librarian how he or she would want to be treated by their doctor, then apply that same level of courtesy to their patrons. She discussed the importance of keeping patron information confidential and treating all requests with respect, much like a doctor keeps medical files confidential due to HIPPA privacy laws.  She added that librarians should be especially sensitive to why someone might be asking a question. “We often ask a student for context… ‘Is this for a class? A particular project?’ but you never know the personal reasons behind why they may be asking and we need to respect those, too.”

One of the biggest concerns she noted for the profession as a whole was with “half-truth” accounts of information (things that are neither 100% true or false). She cited the recent Brian Williams scandal as just one example. She wondered about the ethical implications of someone in an information profession providing access to resources that contained "stretched truths."

One of my favorite things that my contact said was that she felt that teaching students to be ethically-minded in college also helps them in life after graduation. She asserted that students who were in the habit of regularly citing things were less likely to have issues in other areas of their lives. For example, a student that develops bad habits may see them bleed over into his or her working life to the resentment of his colleagues or the ire of his boss if credit is taken for ideas that are not original.  My interviewee felt that students with good academic honesty practices are “always thinking and always adding to existing knowledge” rather than taking it and claiming it as their own.

The final interesting tidbit I will share relates to the librarian’s experiences with distance education students. As suspected, she confirmed that online learning opportunities definitely pose a challenge to academic honesty. Again, she noted that most honesty violations among distance students occur because of poor educator practices. She felt that it was the academic librarian’s role to work with faculty members to help them better understand learning management systems. One example that she saw frequently was instructors using the same exam format every year, meaning that students could copy down the order of the answers and share them with one another. Librarians can make a difference by showing instructors how to use technology to randomize question and answer order. Additionally, she spoke about the importance of librarians being a part of the course planning process. In her opinion, librarians should work with faculty members to develop projects that require students to use the library and learn proper information use practices. Rather than issuing a traditional assessment, instructors could use comprehensive projects to determine knowledge acquisition and synthesis.
This section includes what I personally found most intriguing, but there were many important points brought up in the interview. It was difficult to choose just a few ideas to highlight and the ones I have included are not necessarily more important to the central focus of the interview. If this subject is of particular interest to you, I would recommend perusing through the entire interview by clicking on the “Read More” link.

Brief Reflections:

When looking at previous posts, I find it interesting that what my librarian interviewee said agreed with much of what I had discovered in my own research thus far. She also noted that forces outside of the student’s psyche could be responsible for influencing the student to engage in dishonest behavior. However, instead of placing the blame on the structure of the educational system as a whole, she cited examples of instructors who were not engaging in appropriate practices and setting poor examples. I particularly like her idea that librarians are responsible for educating the entire campus community about proper information use and this role includes ensuring that instructors are doing what they can to minimize dishonesty. I had never before considered myself as someday being in the role of “developing ethically minded citizens,” but after reflecting on this interview I can see how information literacy skills could easily transfer to a student’s life after college.

Discussion Questions:

What do you feel is the librarian’s role in preserving academic honesty? With distance education becoming more prevalent, how do you feel that librarians can reach out to students and arm them with the skills they need for ethical information use? What do you think it means to be an “ethical librarian”? What do you think has the most influence on a student’s decision to cheat? Poor faculty practices? The pressure and stress to achieve a particular grade? The student’s “ethical” personality? Are there any other influencing factors I have not discussed yet?

Image taken by the blog author.

See the entire interview below the cut!

Investigating Research: “An Empirical Research Study of the Efficacy of Two Plagiarism-Detection Applications”

About the Research Study…

In the last couple of posts I examined both philosophical theories behind personal decision making and flaws in the educational system that could serve as outside influences. The webinar I reviewed clearly shifted the blame for unintentional academic honesty violations to higher education institutions. I touched on the importance of taking an introspective look at library practices, but to know where to improve I felt that I first needed a foundational knowledge of the current efforts taking place. Thus, for this post I decided to examine a popular method of discouraging dishonesty—plagiarism detection software.

Every college student has probably encountered “anti-cheating” software at some point, if only as a warning of its use in the classroom. Technology has changed both the way that students cheat (buying papers off the internet, copying and pasting sources from online articles, etc.) and the way that instructors choose to catch dishonest acts. I felt that such a universally widespread method needed further investigation. Do these programs actually discourage dishonesty among intentional cheaters? Do the programs themselves actually work or do they flag a lot of false positives? How much should educators or librarians rely on this software? Is one program better than another at detecting honesty violations? Is the use of technology to discourage or detect cheating an effective practice or should some other method be considered? These were the questions I intended to answer when I started this research journey.

Key Highlights:

For the purposes of this posting, I chose a study by Hill and Page (2009) that compared two of the most widely-used plagiarism detection programs on the market—SafeAssign and Turnitin. The researchers asked for student volunteers who submitted papers they claimed were 100% plagiarism-free. Using these works as a baseline, the researchers purposely added in material from online sources. Their additions were copied word-for-word to give the software the best chance at detecting a violation. The new and “improved” documents were then run through both programs to see what would be detected and what would be falsely flagged.

As it turns out, there was a significant difference beween the two programs. Turnitin was the far superior software with 82.4% of the plagiarized material being detected, compared to SafeAssign’s 61.9%. Additionally, Turnitin was much less likely to identify false positives, triggering 9.9% of the time compared to more than double that rate (23.6%) from SafeAssign. Interestingly, neither program was able to detect 100% of the plagiarized content despite the authors using fairly well-known sources that were very likely to be in program’s data bank.

One of the reasons the study authors pointed to regarding SafeAssigns poor efficacy rate was the fact that this program did not attempt to look for quotation marks, thus, it was likely to flag things that were legitimately cited by the original author. Still, this does not explain the lack of detection of the word-for-word items, nor does normalizing this factor mean that the two programs are even. It seems that there is still a major discrepancy among the most commonly-used detection programs.

      

Graphs created by the blog author.

Brief Reflections:

I suppose what bothered me most about the findings of this study was the fact that neither program was able to detect all of the instances of plagiarized work, even when it was copied directly from the source material. Some of what the software did end up detecting was legitimately cited. It surprised me that one in every ten students in a classroom could be flagged for plagiarism where none exists! This software seems too error prone to rely on, but perhaps that is not the point. Could it be that the actual intention is to act as a deterrent by the mere mention of it? I remember as a child my mother would often threaten to “turn the car around” if I continued to misbehave in the back seat. It was likely a threat without teeth, but it got me to behave myself because the possibility of being punished was there. Is a similar tactic intended when librarians and instructors employ the use of cheating detection software in the classroom? If so, does it actually deter dishonest behavior if the student knows that the program is prone to error?

Hill and Page (2009) mention that perhaps these programs should be viewed as tools instead (in one instance they even compare them to a doctor’s scalpel). While anti-cheating software does have the possibility of (potentially) saving time by pointing out egregious examples, human insight is still needed to determine whether plagiarism has actually occurred. It seems that computers do not have the intelligence (yet) to determine this definitively.

The main take away from this article was the importance of recognizing that detection software (or other cheating deterrents for that matter) is not meant to replace information literacy instruction. Librarians and educators must still put their efforts into explaining why a responsible use of information is important. This includes lessons about how to properly give someone their due credit. One of my favorite parts of the article features a teacher who was using software detection programs in a different way. Instead of using them for enforcement, he instead encouraged his students to submit several drafts and see where they had failed to cite so that they could correct their behavior and learn from it. Personally, I feel that this is the best “ethical” use of these types of programs. It encourages honesty because it allows the student to try and fail without punishment.

Discussion Questions:

Do you feel that the use of cheating detection programs is ethical, given that they are so prone to error? Is it a necessary deterrent? What do you think the best uses of these types of programs are? Do you use them (or would you use them) in your own library?

See the full report about the study behind the cut!

Examining a Workshop: “The Accidental Plagiarist”

About the Webinar…

If you have been following the last few posts you will notice an interesting trend. In several areas I mention the idea of the campus environment being a catalyst for academic dishonesty. The documentary discussed in the first post mentions this explicitly, stating that the pressure that students are under to succeed is overwhelming. 

For this post, then, I wanted to expose potential cracks in the structure of higher education to see if there was any meat to the theory that students who chose to cheat were merely reacting to a faulty design. Thus, I discovered a webinar called “The Accidental Plagiarist.”

Plagiarism is just one form of academic dishonesty, but according to Gallant (2014) it is the most common. So what causes students to copy the work of others without giving due credit? Is it always intentional? Is it desperation or laziness that leads students to make this choice? Is there something that librarians and educators are failing to communicate? 

Key Highlights:

Gallant’s (2014) stance is that the very foundation of higher education is flawed. Grades are treated like a form of currency. In other words, if students want to get to the next level of their programs, they must achieve and maintain a certain grade point average. This leads to an obsession with seeing a certain letter on a report card, rather than focusing on the skills and knowledge gained. Students are pushed to the breaking point and are willing to do anything to relieve the pressure they feel.

Combine this theory with the idea of changing attitudes of information ownership in the technology age and you have a recipe for plagiarism. What do I mean by “changing attitudes”? Consider how the average student views a website like Wikipedia (hear me out, librarians… do not light your torches just yet). This gigantic information source (we can argue credibility later) can be added to and edited by anyone in the world. Articles have no single author or owner. Many students in Gallant’s experience did not understand the concept of proprietary information, particularly when it came to knowledge from online sources. In fact, she reported in the workshop that one of her students had called the internet “a mutual brain” that everyone could tap!

Given this formula for dishonesty, we still have yet to determine whether students are simply reacting to it (and thus unintentionally being dishonest) or are consciously reflecting on it and attempting to game the system out of spite. Gallant’s view is that there are different “types” of plagiarism, both intentional and unintentional:

1. “Plagiarism as cheating” means that students are completely aware that what they are doing is dishonest, but they make the decision to plagiarize anyway.

2. “Sloppy authorship” where a student forgot about a deadline and hastily put their project together. Students in this category do not mean to cheat, they simply neglected to include their sources before rushing to turn in their assignment.

3. “Plagiarism by accident” involves a student that does not understand the basics of citing sources. Like the previous category, this type of plagiarism is unintentional. There is simply a lack of understanding and this is where the guidance of a librarian can really come in handy.

Brief Reflections:

When doing research to find a webinar about academic dishonesty, so many of the workshops I found placed the blame solely on the students for their behavior rather than discussing how educators and librarians could improve. This is not to say that I feel that individuals are not responsible for the choices they make—certainly this is true, but decisions are rarely made inside a “vacuum” and many outside forces can influence behaviors. “The Accidental Plagiarist” was a refreshing take on this issue because it demonstrated the influence that the educational system could have on student decision making. The academic honesty code makes us quick to judge every integrity violation, but until viewing this webinar I had not realized that some of these acts may be unintentional. In fact, it may even point to areas where I need to improve as a (future) librarian. If students are still committing honesty violations after attending one of my information literacy courses, I may need to take another look at my teaching methods. Am I unclear? Is there something I am not doing to reach out to the campus community and show them that the library is here to help? I may not be able to prevent sloppy authorship or intentional dishonesty from occurring, but how can I improve my methods to minimize violations resulting from plagiarism by accident?

Discussion Questions:

Do you agree with the presenter that every act of plagiarism should be documented, regardless of intention? Is it ethical to report honesty violations that you knew were unintentional? What steps do you feel can be made to improve service delivery and help minimize accidental plagiarism? Are there ways the library can work with faculty members to help reduce sloppy authorship?

 

Gallant, Tricia Bertram. 2014. “The Accidental Plagiarist: The Myths, the Truths, and What it All Means for Teaching & Learning.” Turnitin.com. Vimeo video, 27:32. June 18. Accessed April 6, 2015. http://go.turnitin.com/l/45292/2014-06-18/3kb5.

  See the entire webinar review paper behind the cut!

Analyzing Ethical Theories: The Theory of Planned Behavior

About The Theory of Planned Behavior…

In the last blog post I briefly commented on the prevalence of academic honesty violations in colleges and universities. For this next post, it seemed fitting to delve deeper into the reasons behind why so many students made the choice to cheat. Perhaps if librarians understood the underlying motivations of the students they served, they could take measures to help prevent them from making the wrong ethical choice.

After examining dozens of articles and theories, I found Meng et al.’s (2014) approach of connecting the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to the decision-making behavior of students to be the most engaging.

Key Highlights:

The Theory of Planned Behavior explains that individuals’ behaviors are driven by three main factors: attitude (personal ethics/morals), subjective norms (how others feel about the situation), and the perceived behavioral control over a situation. When faced with a decision such as cheating, a student will filter the experience through their own moral code about the correctness of the behavior, examine how others close to them feel about this choice, and attempt to determine how easy that behavior would be to pull off.

Later in the article, the authors posit that each individual has a particular “ethical” type. These types involve varying degrees of relativism and idealism. Idealists believe there is a particular code that one can follow that will result in the correct outcome every time, whereas Relativists like to find their own way to the “best” outcome and this changes from situation to situation.

It gets a tad bit complicated from here, but needless to say, this is where the four different types come from:

1. Situationalists (high relativism, high idealism) are the free-spirits who reject rigidity and rules in favor of examining each situation independently and considering how others might be affected.

2. Absolutists (low relativism, high idealism) have rigid moral guidelines that they are not willing to sway from. They apply these to every situation and expect that others do the same.

3. Subjectivitsts (high relativism, low idealism) are the “go with your gut” types who use their personal feelings and their own agendas to guide them. They tend to be viewed as selfish, as they consciously put their needs before others.

4. Exceptionists (low relativism, low idealism) are more middle of the road. They have a set of moral guidelines they follow, but are willing to bend the rules under the right circumstances. The most pragmatic of the bunch, they allow logic to be their guide.

Below, I included an image to represent these concepts in a more digestible format.

Image created by the blog author.

Essentially, what the authors are getting at here is that the type of ethical personality that one leans toward could drive the types of decisions that are made. For example, if the conditions for cheating are prime and everyone in class is doing it with very few repercussions, an Absolutist would still be unlikely to cheat if his or her moral code prevented it. In fact, they may even be likely to report the other students who participated in behavior they considered morally reprehensible (Meng, et al. 2014). In short, both concepts work together to create a model for predicting future behaviors.

Brief Reflections:

This was the first theory I read that I felt I could immediately apply. It takes two very important factors into account. First, the element of peer-pressure—what people around you think and how you want them to view you. Second, the assumed opportunity costs for attempting a particular behavior. This sums up the pressures present in a college environment. Students, who are often under the pressure of deadlines, must consider the best ways to manage their time while also succeeding in their courses. Increased stress or a perceived lack of time can cause students to make decisions they normally would not have. This is particularly true if they feel that there are few consequences for making the “wrong” ethical choice.

As a (future) librarian, I feel that this model can be used with success to help quell cheating behaviors. For example, librarians can work with faculty members to develop a stricter academic honesty code that has meaningful consequences. Perhaps my favorite application of this model, however, is in considering ways that the library can make cheating the harder and more annoying option by making honesty mind-bogglingly simple in comparison. This means increased marketing of the library’s services and a greater consideration of the usability of the library. Librarians should think of ways to make the library more convenient, such as providing services online or increasing operating hours. In my opinion, if a student views library services to be easily accessible and particularly useful, they will be more likely to choose the moral high ground when faced with stressful academic situations.

Discussion Questions:

Which “ethical personality” would you consider yourself falling under? What considerations do you make when considering an ethical dilemma in the library? Can you think of ways this model could be used to predict student behavior and help discourage cheating in the academic environment? Are there any other authors or theories that you think might complement this theory or better explain/predict student behavior?

See the entire exploratory paper behind the cut!

Reviewing an Academic Honesty Film: “Faking the Grade”

About “Faking the Grade…”

Admittedly, I came into the semester knowing very little about the subject of academic dishonesty as it relates to the academic library. What little I did know was from my own experience as a student where I was asked to read the school’s “honesty code” every semester. I knew that academic librarians were tasked with teaching Information Literacy courses, but I was not clear on their roles in preserving integrity. I soon realized that I had never before examined this issue through an ethical or philosophical microscope!

To get a feel for just how widespread the issue of academic dishonesty is, I decided to look for documentaries or other non-fiction media that could give me a brief overview of the topic. This was how I stumbled upon “Faking the Grade.” 

“Faking the Grade” is a documentary film by Andy Blicq that explores the structure of the modern educational system, the psychological factors that drive students to cheat, and solutions for educators (and I would posit librarians, too) about prevention methods. I feel that it is an excellent place to start if you are new to the subject of academic honesty ethics or if you have heard about it, but are curious to learn more.

The only downside to this film is that I was unable to find a free or low-cost version of it anywhere. Even the “educational” version of the film was $120.00! Cost aside, this would make an excellent film to add to a of professional development collection (which will be discussed in a later blog post). I wish that I had been able to see the entire documentary.

Key Highlights:

From what I was able to glean from the two video clips, the most compelling information I found was that half (50%) of the undergraduate students who responded to a Canadian study about academic integrity admitted to cheating while attending a university. Furthermore, the study reported that three-quarters (75%) of respondents said they cheated in high school (Blicq 2012).

Additionally, it was very surprising how technology was being used to both facilitate and discourage cheating. The first clip discusses how students are using tiny Bluetooth earpieces to help them cheat. In the clip, they are no bigger than an eraser head (Blicq 2012)! Teachers are also armed with technology and are on the defensive, as in the second clip (below the cut) that shows a cellphone detectors and cameras that proctors can use that can be hidden inside every day devices (Blicq 2012).

Brief Reflections:

What surprised me most about about these clips is just how prevalent cheating is in colleges and universities. Perhaps I live in idyllic world, but I assumed that given the pressures and serious consequences with cheating in college (such as being kicked from the program) would be enough to detract from academic dishonesty. I know that cheating does happen in college, but I suppose I thought the number would be much lower. It makes me wonder if technology may have contributed to an increase in dishonest behavior or if the statistics from the film have been consistent over time. Is cheating a constant when exposed to external pressures? Is is a part of human nature? Can we, as librarians, do anything to influence this behavior? I plan to explore this more in my next post about some of the theories behind what motivates us to cheat.

Discussion Questions:

Do you agree with the documentary’s stance that the nature of the higher education environment encourages cheating? Do you feel the response would have been different if the integrity survey was given in a different country (in other words, is this issue unique to North America)? Is it ethical for proctors, teachers, or librarians to use hidden technology in an attempt to catch students in the act? Does recording students in an attempt to reveal dishonesty constitute a privacy violation?

Feel free to leave a comment on any of these questions or anything else that you found interesting!

Video Clip #1:

Blicq, Andy. 2012. “Faking the Grade.” Merit Motion Pictures. YouTube video, 3:18. Accessed March 16, 2015. http://meritmotionpictures.com/portfolio-items/faking-the-grade/.

See the entire review below the cut!