Alternative Paths to Academic Integrity

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Latest update: February 27, 2000
Faculty on the Site.

This paper is the first in a series of evaluative reports in which students and faculty have joined in an attempt to understand and support issues of integrity in the academy. Non-traditional commuter college populations have changed drastically in the last two decades. Institutions of higher education, like so many other bureaucratic systems have become structurally violent, dealing more with numbers and rules that permit us to certify uniformly and en masse than with the local narratives that might have told us more about how both students and the institution were adapting to the new information age.

In this paper we stop to hear the local narratives. We describe a project that has welcomed students to tell those narratives and that has struggled to hear them in good faith. We began by looking at "cheating" from a different perspective. One of our teachers compared cheating to a magical rite that wards off evil spirits. She said that for a student who really doesn't have a clue as to what's expected from them, cheating may seem to be the only way out. How much better if we could try to understand that student's dilemma and guide him/her through alternative paths, instead of punishing him/her.

What appears to affect student learning, development and satisfaction the most, are the vitality of the classroom experience, the student-faculty relationships ouside of the classroom and the strength of student friendships.

The use of the internet allows the student a strong supportive system that is integrated with the classroom setting and fellow students around the world.  This integrated and non-violent interaction fosters a strong sense of oneness between students and the professor to allow for excellent academic progress (personally and professionally.

Leo F. Buscaglia, Living, Loving and Learning, Fawcett Columbine, 1982.

One aspect of that trust is in the granting of validity to what our students say. This reflects feminist methodology, especially that which has insisted upon the need to acknowledge local narratives without demanding "scientific objectivity." We introduced an important feedback component to this project. We wanted to know at all times what we could assume we had all prepared in readings. So we asked students to e-mail statements of preparedness for specific topics. And we asked faculty to put on the site specific topics and issues relating to the readings.

This afforded us genuine feedback which allowed us to state our assumptions of preparedness clearly to one another, and let us gauge how effectively we could manage to carry on a discussion that was founded on mutual preparedness.

Catharine A. MacKinnon, Toward A Feminist Theory of the State, Harvard University Press, 1989.

Alfie Kohn's Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Goldstars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes. Houghton Mifflin, 1995.

Covaleskie, John F. "Power Goes to School: Teachers, Students, and Discipline," Philosophy of Education, 1993.

This paper is one of the first to illustrate the process text, a paper constructed by a team of faculty and students, working together, whenever each can find a moment, from wherever they are, even cross country. We created this kind of process text because most of us do not have the discretionary time to sit quietly for many afternoons working on a professional paper. Conflicting interests and needs divide our attention and our time. By putting our efforts together, learning to work over distance with the internet, we are creating a new path to academic integrity.

For some, academic integrity involves concerns over cheating. For us, it involves the need to realize the full potential of our academic preparation, even including the options of working on professional papers in spite of time and space constraints.

Nicholas Fox. "Intertextuality and the Writing of Social Research." Electronic Journal of Sociology (1995)

It's working for us. It's working for the 74 students who signed up for a course that wasn't even in the printed schedule. It has forced us to find ways of measuring our learning, even when that learning has to be on the fly, not in the old ideal circumstances of a secluded academy.

Measuring what's working, is the central task we are about right now. And this project allows students to go about it with faculty, exploring new alternatives, searching for the good new days that lie ahead.

Curran and Takata, Final Measurement of Learning, Dear Habermas, 1999.

For example, this paper has been written in face to face group sessions in jeanne's office, in face to face sessions with the two authors, in e-mail, cross the country by e-mail and phone with Susan Takata at the University of Wisconsin. Who are the authors? We are. Jeanne made sure that this paper reflected primarily our thoughts. That was a huge job of editing, but an important one. In April, this paper will be presented ot the Western Social Science Association meetings in San Diego, in a revised format that will include jeanne's and susan's perceptions.

That presents new issues of integrity, of intellectual property, of trust and the social bonds of learning and teachcing. These are the issues many of us want our academy to deal with. We hope that this process will begin with this paper.

All too often a student would like to raise their hand and participate but doesn’t because they are afraid their opinion or interpretation of material doesn’t adhere to the professor’s ideals. In this arena there is no right or wrong. The willingness to listen in good faith, to allow them to be heard allows academic integrity to blossom.

Encouragement of this mode of leaning can only foster positive results in one’s intelligence and confidence as a truly worthwhile unique individual.

Because this format is new and so different from normal academic learning, the student find themselves asking "where’s the camera? Is this candid camera? No syllabus to tell them how many chapters will be covered for the first mid term, how much attendance is a expected before your grade is lowered one grade, how long/how many pages is required

When they finally come to the conclusion this is real, they finally realize that "I" the student have a voice that "will" be heard. The student is only required to e-mail in 25 words or less on a weekly or more frequent basis. The array of links that can be used as resource material is limitless. After all is explored over the course of the semester, the student has refined their writing skills, probably has written a enough material to be recognized as a substantial term paper (with less stress of course). The student has been exposed to several authors, unique discourses and given "good faith" solutions to problems that have previously been tackled in a structurally violent way. This empowers the student to take an active part in their academic learning and be accountable for their actions and experiences in the academic environment.

Results: Along with many returning students from last semester, we’ve seen a tremendous growth in classes, especially Love 1A. Originally planned to accommodate 15 to 20 students, the outpour of enthusiasm and interest of concerned students, enrollment has mushroomed to over 50 students. Again this goes to prove the point that students want to learn and desire to seek alternatives to academic learning that is not structurally violent.

A major problem on university campuses today is a purported lack of integrity on the part of present day students. This paper proposes an alternative perspective and describes a current project in which academic integrity is fostered through community commitment and involvement.

The project originates from an applicatiion of restorative justice to some general characteristics of today's students. When a university lecturer proposed that students establish contact with their professor by e-mailing whether they had prepared for the day's lecture, students complained that face validity could not be given to what students said because they would lie. This is a sturcturally violent response to the structural violence of an institution that does not implicitly trust its students' motivation. Many students do indeed have academic integrity; most want to learn.

This paper reports results from the first phase of this project. Two classes at UWP and five at CSUDH used the student's statement of preparedness as a measure of learning. We report on students' interpretation of their own trust of each other, of validity claims they believe the institution should hear in good faith, and their satisfaction with preparedness as a measure of learning.

There will at some point, be a sense of shame on the part of the unprepared student, because this student will be excluded from discourse as other students become aware of an individual's lack of preparation and knowledge to adequately engage in an intelligent discourse.