Why is Academic Integrity Education Important?
McCabe, Butterfield and Trevino in 2012 found that 2/3 of students report they engage in academic dishonesty. Lang in 2013 found that as many as 65 – 82 % of students have cheated, based on a review of surveys conducted on the extent of cheating.
In an attempt to respond to this challenging student conduct issue, The RAISE System for Academic Integrity Education was developed.
Overview:
RAISE is a 55 minute on-line tutorial that educates about the following topics: General Information, Unauthorized Collaboration, Technology, Plagiarism/Copyright, and Decision-Making Guidelines. Students review the individual topics, and pass tests to successfully complete the module.
Since the fall of 2012, over 6,000 students from University of Arkansas and Kansas State University have participated in research on the effectiveness of RAISE.
Preliminary results of the research regarding academic integrity attitudes and perceptions using pre/post survey data indicate that both student’s knowledge & understanding of academic integrity and their attitudes toward academic integrity significantly improved. Moreover, students learned equally as well from The RAISE System as they did from the one hour lecture sessions offered on campus. In effect, the utilization of RAISE saves time and resources. Based on these results, it is felt that student participation in any form of academic integrity education has the potential to change campus academic integrity culture – academic integrity knowledge & understanding as well as attitudes and perceptions significantly improved.
For proactive/reactive education with an affordable “student pay” model:
RAISE can be used for both proactive and reactive education of students via “block usage” pricing. A cost effective “student pay” model is available for schools interested in using the product to educate students when a cheating violation occurs.
For more information:
– Research contact: Paul Cronan (Cronan@uark.edu).
References:
Lang, J. M. (2013). Cheating lessons: Learning from academic dishonesty. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
McCabe, D. L., Butterfield, K. D. and Treviño, L. K. (2012). Cheating in college: Why students do it and what educators can do about it. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Submitted by Terri Scanlon, Managing Director, Reslife.Net