Modern Integrity College Solutions
The pandemic situation in the last years caused a lot of cases of dishonesty and plagiarism in education. Online instruction turned education into a virtual sphere and students got tempted to cheat with the use of services from essay mills, digital devices and various online tools. Most of the latest trends in the field of academic integrity are related to digital cheating. Everything is moving forward and nothing is as important for the teachers as staying tuned into the changes. Being unaware of the emerging trends, they fall behind and there is no more chance to get misconduct under control. Without establishing a new culture of academic integrity, it is not possible to prevent a crisis in the sphere. Only crafting a code and set of universal solutions needed for authentic learning, college and university teachers can fight the tragedy that now resembles a huge monster, willing to swallow the system of education.
What Is Academic Integrity?
One of the essential aspects students should be aware of is the essence of academic integrity. They need to know that it is important to follow the rules and meet the expectations in terms of respect, responsibility, justice, honesty, trust, and fairness. Maintenance of academic integrity is actually a rule not to be violated. No matter how many times you are lecturing about it, only consistent demonstration of academic integrity in every particular case makes a difference.
Actually, academic integrity has become a key to a precise evaluation of knowledge. Only the awareness of student misconduct and punishments for it can give a start to promoting integrity in schools. Internationalization and commercialization in schools have made the teachers get a more precise focus on the issues related to ethics. The scope of academic corruption has got enormous: cheating on exams, using illegal services to have assignments completed, sharing papers, falsifying data, fabricating results of experiments and lab reports, and other ways to avoid responsibility and effort are getting more and more popular.
Latest Tendencies in Establishing Academic Integrity
- Use of digital checkers of plagiarism
Teachers now can authenticate the content of students’ papers with various checkers. There is no more need in manual detection and guesses. Scanning the essay with Plagiarismsearch.com, a teacher knows for sure that owing to artificial intelligence and advanced algorithms of search, a student cannot get the source from the database without getting noticed. Plagiarism detectors prevent all kinds of duplications and encourage honesty in writing.
- Referencing and citing
Proper attribution to the original authors is not a new tendency, but it is still a solid way to maintain academic integrity in schools. Copying ideas without proper referencing is stealing.
Key Integrity College Solutions
Every college cares about academic integrity and considers it in all the courses. If students do not understand what cheating means or how plagiarism in their assignments can affect their scores, it will be complicated to maintain honesty and encourage following the principles of academic integrity.
One of the most effective solutions one can use in the college environment to address the issues of academic integrity is to talk about it a lot. How can it be done?
- Discussion of the academic integrity infringement with the students at the beginning of every new semester;
- Repeating the same explanations before every important assignment or exam;
- Explaining that it is plagiarism that matters not the intent to do that; so, unintentional plagiarism is equal to deliberate copying;
- Referring to the effects of cheating on the future career opportunities and current academic performance.
What else can a teacher do to prevent the problem?
- Give enough resources
Listening or reading general things about cheating in colleges, students do not feel motivated to avoid plagiarism. However, if they get to know about specific examples of improper citing or paraphrase that led to plagiarism, they might be more involved. Discussing possible ways to prevent the accusation in plagiarism, learning about excellent writing strategies, practicing in the use of citation styles, and giving the students multiple resources on the discussed topics, the teacher takes a proactive step to address the problem.
- Learning more about new ways to cheat in writing
Using Plagiarismsearch.com, a teacher sees links to the sources a student took without any reference to the actual authors. However, it is always essential to keep networking with college colleagues, using web resources, attending workshops on professional development, and using all possible ways to prevent committing acts of academic dishonesty.
- Have specific policies
The faculty needs to develop specific policies that regulate how all cases of plagiarism are handled. They should also decide on the software to detect copied content. It is also important to make sure that all the students get to know about the policies during the first class, not later in the semester.
- Model the expected behavior
The faculty is supposed to apply particular guidelines about citing in all their materials. The students should see that the staff does not only tell them about the policies, but also demonstrates the attitude they expect.
- Ensure proactive engagement of the students
The students should get to know about the policies related to plagiarism not in a boring lecture, but in discussion groups. The teachers should encourage them to ask questions and offer their own possible solutions.
Few things in the sphere of education remain unchanged for years. Actually, everything gets transformed so quickly that it is impossible to notice the exact time when the old got replaced with the new forever. The learning outcomes of the students still have great value and it is clear that in the present-day world, nobody can avoid temptations. There are so many great solutions that the students can use to avoid all stresses and pressure of the academic environment that it is hard to think of valid reasons they should avoid them. Appealing offers of online writing companies seem to be an easy way to enjoy student life with all assignments done and lots of time for entertainment. It is high time for the teachers to keep up with the present-day trends and find a way to say No to dishonesty in education.
