Encouraging academic integrity to discourage plagiarism

Academic integrity and plagiarism have become a more acute problem since the widespread use of ICT in teaching (Groark et al. 2001); Underwood & Szabo 2003). While there are now many plagiarism detection tools available to help educators combat academic dishonesty and cheating, these reactive measures cannot be solely relied upon. It is important that, at the earliest possible stage, students are supported with positive encouragement and timely reinforcements. Not only students will appreciate the values of academic integrity, they are also better informed to treat plagiarism an unacceptable behaviour.

This paper will look at how three schools at the University of Southampton have successfully used an online academic integrity guideline to engage students to understand why academic integrity is a central part in professional and personal development during and beyond their study. The guideline comprises reading resources and a formative quiz that are adapted from the outcome of the DialogPLUS project funded jointly by JISC in the UK and NSF in the US (Fill et al., 2006). Students are now equipped with a coherent and accessible self-contained resource that helps them to gauge their understanding of the issues. The guideline is no longer a read-only passive resource for box ticking but an online activity that requires students to play an active role in checking and agreeing with the plagiarism statement. While this work is still in progress, the paper will assess whether this highly visible student-centred guideline has made academic misconducts less excusable, and more importantly, less likely.