24 Academic Integrity

Academic Integrity

It’s important to think about what kinds of issues brand new college students, many in the first generation to attend college and many from homes where English is not the primary language, face around academic integrity.  In selecting materials for this section we chose to focus less on learning specific rules or practices than on general concepts of having confidence in their own work. LEH 250 students are starting a process of learning about academic integrity which will ultimately (by the end of college) include many dimensions.  This is an introduction to the concept.

In particular, students sometimes copy work because they feel that their English is not good enough or that their knowledge of the topics is not strong enough.  What we want is for them to trust the quality of their own imperfect work. We particularly recommend the MIT site as providing a way into this topic that does not focus on punishment, but rather trusting your own ideas and work and believing in your own capabilities.  We also include a library comic which raises important questions.

Often material on this topic includes things like practicing appropriate paraphrasing and citation p.ractices.  This can also be worthwhile, and is something you might want to include in an expanded unit (or incorporated into your disciplinary unit).  Howeever, our experience has been that overloading first-year students with information that will not apply in their current courses is not productive.

Our provided assignment relies on a comic created by the library. Students read the comic and write a reflection.  However you can certainly expand this. This is also where a discussion of AI can land.  One recommendation is to focus on being ethical people rather than emphasizing punitive consequences.