The University of Arizona
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April 2008
Volume 1, Issue 2
 

Research & Trends
Academic Integrity at The University of Arizona

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By Keith Humphrey, Ph. D.

Academic integrity is a fundamental value of teaching, learning, and scholarship. According to the Center for Academic Integrity, 75 percent of students admit to some form of cheating, including cheating on tests and cheating on written assignments. The numbers of actual violations reported to the UA Dean of Students Office does not mirror this statistic, but they do reveal some interesting trends about our students.

The academic year 2005-06 saw 325 reported violations to the UA Dean of Students Office, with the vast majority of those violations being plagiarism at 256. The following academic year, 2006-07, saw a slight drop in both overall violations to 304 and plagiarism violations to 227. Statistics from Fall 2007 are indicating an increase in violations for the academic year with 180 overall violations reported and adjudicated by early January, and 108 of those violations being plagiarism.

While plagiarism represents the majority of reported violations at the UA, it is clear from the data collected from Turnitin.com that many UA faculty are handling plagiarism violations outside of the Code of Academic Integrity. Turnitin.com is the online service utilized by many colleges whereby students are required to turn in papers electronically via the Turnitin service. Turnitin.com scans papers for plagiarism violations and reports the percentage of the paper that consists of outside sources rather than original thought. At the UA, 40-60 percent is deemed an acceptable level of outside sources. In 2006-07, over 76,000 UA student papers were turned in online, and almost 2,500 of those papers exceeded the acceptable level of matching outside sources 75-100 percent of the time.

Returning to the reported 2006-07 violations, 130 of the 304 reported were committed by freshmen – with between 50-60 violations each from sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Male students committed 172 of the total number of violations and only 16 violations were committed by international students. Students from ethnic minority groups tended to commit a greater percentage of the academic integrity violations than they represent in the entire UA student population.

Looking deeper into the profile of the students who commit academic integrity violations, students from the Eller College of Management, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and University College are committing the most number of violations. As these three colleges are the largest in student population, it is not surprising to see the bulk of the violations coming from these areas. When violations are examined by the college reporting the violation, University College drops out of the top tier because very few courses are administered out of this college. Eller and Social and Behavioral Sciences remain at the top of this list as well, and are joined by the College of Science.

There are many things that professors can do to help reduce academic integrity violations in courses. These include:

As always, the Dean of Students Office is glad to serve as a resource for students or faculty in the academic integrity process.

Important Student Support Information

Links to Important Policies

Opportunities to learn more online – listen to the following Podcasts.

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