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Ultimately, many stakeholders in higher education would like to
know how to affirm academic integrity. Clearly, demonstrating that
you take the concept seriously by implementing an academic integrity
policy or honor codes and enforcing that code or policy is an excellent
first step. Ensuring that students, faculty and administrators are
familiar with the policy or code is also important. Ultimately,
academic integrity cannot be fostered without some commitment of
resources by colleges and universities to achieve this end.
Donald McCabe and Gary Pavela have outlined ten principles of academic
integrity that colleges and universities could incorporate that
would foster academic integrity and thereby decrease incidences
of academic dishonesty:
10 Principles
of Academic Integrity |
- Affirm the importance of academic integrity by affirming
certain core values such as honesty, truth and fairness.
- Foster a love of learning by giving students challenging,
useful and fair work.
- Treat students as ends in themselves deserving
individual attention and consideration.
- Promote an environment of trust in the classroom
by avoiding arbitrary rules and trivial assignments.
- Encourage student responsibility for academic integrity
by encouraging reporting abuses.
- Clarify expectations for students regarding honesty
in academic work.
- Develop fair and relevant forms of assessment.
- Reduce opportunities to engage in academic dishonesty
by setting clear policies and realistic standards
for collaboration, improper classroom management or
poor examination security.
- Challenge occurrences of academic dishonesty by
not ignoring academic dishonesty when it takes place.
- Assist in defining and supporting campus wide academic
integrity standards as opposed to maintaining artificial
divisions between departments and schools.
(from http://www.collegepubs.com/ref/10PrinAcaInteg.shtml)
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Providing additional writing and research assistance to students
is also important. Writing Centers, Librarians and other instructional
as well as non-instructional support units within the university
can help to foster academic integrity by assisting students avoid
plagiarism and other academic dishonest activities. In attempting
to find a solution to unethical academic behavior, there is no silver
bullet or one size fits all approach. Indeed, the measures taken
at any institution depend on the mission, values and structure of
the institution. But undoubtedly, success in affirming academic
integrity principles on campus depends on the participation of all
the constituents, students, faculty and administrators. The Center
for Intellectual Property at UMUC encourages your institution’s
use of the VAIL
portal as part of its arsenal in combating academic dishonesty
on your campus. Please explore VAIL for more information on the
various aspects of effectively implementing and enforcing academic
integrity at your institution.
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