Editor’s note: names of sources have been changed for confidentiality purposes. Names John and Bill will be used.
Academic dishonesty is one of the problems Texas A&M University-Commerce faces, especially with the advanced technology and the age of the Internet. Students caught cheating can, in most severe cases, be suspended or expelled from the university.
The university holds both students and faculty to an academic honesty policy as well as a plagiarism policy, which are found on A&M-Commerce’s Web site.
According to the A&M-Commerce’s academic honesty policy, if a student is accused of academic dishonesty, the professor who has accused the student is responsible for starting disciplinary action.
“‘Academic dishonesty’ includes, but is not limited to, plagiarism (the appropriation or stealing of the ideas or words of another and passing them off as one’s own), cheating on exams or other course assignments, collusion (the unauthorized collaboration with others in preparing course assignments), and abuse (destruction, defacing, or removal) of resource material,” according to the A&M-Commerce’s academic honesty policy.
If a student is accused of academic dishonesty, the faculty member making the accusation is responsible for initiating disciplinary proceedings.
According to Gilbert Naizer, interim assistant dean of the College of Education and Human Services, individual cheating policies are set in the faculty’s syllabi.
Linda Matthei, assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said the class instrutor is the first line in dealing with cheaters.
“The professor can decide to give the student a zero on the paper or a zero in the class. If it is serious enough, they can take it to the department head. If it’s even more serious, it can be taken to this office,” she said.
She also said the amount of plagiarism is increasing each semester.
“Part of the reason is that it is easier for professors to detect. It’s so easy to Google a paper. Last week a professor brought me four papers from one class plagiarized off of the Internet,” Matthei said.
Allan Headly, dean of Graduate Studies and Research, said there is a procedure for all graduate student academic honesty issues. First, there must be an interaction between the student and the professor over the problem. The student is then advised to speak with the dean and get advice, and then try to resolve the issue with the professor. If the problem is not resolved, the student can appeal to the department head whom then looks at the evidence and makes a decision. If the student is not satisfied, he or she can appeal to the dean’s office. If it is still not settled, the issue can be brought before the Graduate Council. The Graduate Council is the highest a graduate student can appeal for consideration for his or her case, and there the student can be suspended or expelled, depending on the severity.
Headley said most cases are solved at the professor level, and, in his three-year tenure at A&M-Commerce, he has never had to deal with a case.
Many students said they have witnessed cheating on campus.
“A friend of a friend had the test before the test. Professors haven’t changed the test from year to year,” John, a student at A&M-Commerce, said. He said when it comes to reporting cheating, “If it doesn’t affect you, don’t rock the boat.”
“Students pass a flash drive around, change a couple of words and turn it in,” Bill, a student at A&M-Commerce, said.
Dr. Jiaming Sun, assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice, said in his statistics class when students are required to use computer software to complete an assignment, sometimes students just change the name and turn in work.
“I have a TA (teacher’s assistant), and she will tell me when an exam is totally identical. Once I get the information from her, I talk to the class,” said Sun.
He said he’s had a few cases of cheating at the beginning of the semester, but once students are aware they can be caught, the problem usually goes away.
Last year, the James G. Gee Library subscribed to a service called Turnitin to combat plagiarism. According to Turnitin’s Web site, this online program helps prevent plagiarism by checking student papers submitted online and comparing them to several different sources such as other student papers, books, scholarly journals, newspapers and magazines. Once the paper is checked against these sources, an Originality Report is created. The higher the percentage of this report, the less original the paper.
“It’s more of a learning experience instead of ‘gotcha!’ It can be used as a way to teach people” Greg Mitchell, director of libraries, said.
Craig Wheeler, head reference humanities librarian, trains faculty members on how to use Turnitin. He emphasizes that Turnitin helps students to find good sources, read a lot of material and to draw their own conclusions. Faculty members from each academic college, instructing undergraduate, graduate and even doctoral students, are using this program in different capacities to curb plagiarism.
“We’ve only had it a year, but I do see a lot of faculty members use it, and the feedback is good,” Wheeler said.
“We have to use that as an educational tool and not a punitive tool. We’re not playing cops and robbers here,” Hal Langford, dean of the College of Business and Technology, said.
Langford created a separate academic honesty policy this semester for the College of Business and Technology that is separate from A&M-Commerce’s policy. After reading extensively over the subject and dealing with academic dishonesty issues all summer, he summarized it in a one-page contract that students taking courses in the college will have to sign starting in the spring.
“I think the bottom line is that all universities have problems with academic dishonesty. This university is facing up with it in a real way,” Langford said.