A recent listen to an old James Brown and Fred Wesley album called to mind the importance of self-empowerment. In their 1974 song “Damn Right I Am Somebody,” Mr. Brown asks those present in the studio, “Are you somebody?” Each response is a variation of
Anxious not to be guilty of “policing,” many faculty work hard to prevent academic dishonesty by focusing on student motivation (making learning fun!), feelings (never prompt anxiety!), and (especially for professors who believe themselves to be au courant in terms of pedagogy) “scaffolding” assignments to
We’re in the tornado of AI, hands on our cheeks, breathless, as the stories of impending doom swirl around us. The Wicked Witch of the West pedals by, cackling about the end of days. While we may be powerless to decide whether AI gets
As instructors of introductory composition and general education courses, we are well-acquainted with the threat of plagiarism. In graduate school, our teaching practicums devoted hours to the student “temptation for plagiarism,” and every semester, instructors receive the same emails reminding us of our institution’s
Years ago, I got to work late and had to grab the last parking spot, right in front of the university print shop. Technically, this was legal, but it was frowned upon; the person who ran the shop had a habit of hanging signs
Contract cheating is a relatively new phenomenon that is gaining attention in higher education because it is particularly difficult to detect. Instead of purchasing a paper from an outside source, contract cheating involves hiring someone specifically to create that work for the student. The problem
One of the bedrock principles of academia is not taking credit for another’s work. The way that faculty enforce that directive is by requiring citations in student research.
But formal citations, whether in APA or another format, are used almost exclusively in academic publications. Nearly
Plagiarism detection reports from companies such as Turnitin are the primary way that faculty identify cheating on written work. But my experience in working with hundreds of faculty has shown me that most misread these reports because they have not received proper instruction on how
The most common approach to cheating involves trying to prevent it—multiple versions of a test, roving observation during tests, software that detects plagiarism, policies that prohibit it. However, if we look at cheating across the board, what we’re doing to stop it hasn’t been all
Although some behaviors are pretty much universally identified as cheating (copying exam answers, for example), we’re not in agreement on everything. Particularly significant are disagreements between faculty and students (for example, students don’t think cheating occurs if they look something up on their phone and
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