Academic integrity matters are relevant to all areas of university teaching, but they are of particular importance to degree programmes whose graduates intend to work in the public service. While a large body of scholarship exists on academic integrity, very little has been written that specifically relates to students who intend to pursue careers…

The COVID-19 crisis challenged us to learn, teach, and work in ways we never had before. As we move further into 2021 more educational institutions are thinking about how online teaching and learning can become a permanent way of offering programs. However, there are still ethical considerations that merit deeper consideration. Before the…

Professor Shirley Alexander is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President (Teaching, Learning & Equity) at the University of Technology, Sydney. On 12 November 2014, an article of hers appeared in "The Conversation": "Buying essays: how to make sure assessment is authentic." That article traverses, in an abbreviated way,…

The authors present this interview with Eric Chiang, Associate Professor of Economics, Director of Instructional Technology, and Technology Director for the Online MBA Program at Florida Atlantic University. He has authored 26 peer-reviewed research publications and is the author of "CoreEconomics," an economic principles textbook now in…

The consideration of the impact of the dissertation services industry on the academy is a welcome piece by Jeffry L. White. White raises interesting questions and calls on educators and researchers to think deeply about the role they play in encouraging or combating the use of this industry by graduate students. In this piece, I respond to White's…

In this "Postcard from the Podium," Belinda Luke describes her first experience on a faculty Academic Misconduct Committee. From a personal perspective, the experience made her reconsider her own views not only on plagiarism--to which there are varying degrees ranging perhaps from students looking at a previous assignment to using it as…

This paper is comprised of two essays by the same author. The first essay, "Reading and Writing," refers to two books written by Dan Koeppel as an introduction to the topic of plagiarism in education and the temptation that both educators and students face to cheat. A "Big Lister" is described by Dan Koeppel in his book,…

Early in his career as an engineering librarian, the author saw plagiarism in completely black and white terms. However, digging into the scholarly literature, he finds ample evidence that there are other factors at work in student writing besides a lack of ethics or the intent to cheat. In this article, he briefly highlights some of these…

In this article, the authors argue that while the term plagiarism has long been used as an unhelpful and moralistic catch-all to describe a range of textual "crimes." educators are moving into an era of both increased diversity of student populations and increased capacity to detect textual borrowings through new forms of software. To rely on the…

Those who submit manuscripts to academic journals may benefit from a better understanding of how editors weigh ethics in their interactions with authors. In an attempt to ascertain and to understand editors' ethics, we interviewed 3 current academic journal editors of technical and/or business communication journals. We asked them about the…

In this humorous essay, the author responds to a critique of one of his articles found on a web site that sells term papers. He points out the irony of finding an analysis of an article covering college honor systems on a site that helps students plagiarize, and offers his own critique of the paper.

The academic style (conduct) of academic circles has become a hot topic in the media. This article presents an interview conducted by "China Newsweek" with Vice Director Yuan Zhenguo of the Ministry of Education, Social Sciences Department. In this interview, Zhenguo talks about the Ministry of Education's plan to set up such…

Recently, the author had cause to discuss with a group of his freshman college students the issue of reporting observed or known academic dishonesty. He was very surprised and deeply saddened by the responses most students shared with him on this issue. In short, most--80%--stated that "others' cheating was none of their business;" "It is the…

This article is a rhetorical analysis of the anxious and outraged discourse employed in response to the "rising tide" of cheating and plagiarism. This discourse invites actions that are antithetical to the goals of education and the roles of educators, as exemplified by the proliferation of plagiarism-detection technologies. (Contains 15 notes.)

After reading Kathryn Valentine's article that talked about her interaction with a Chinese student accused of plagiarism, the author was reminded of the effectiveness of student judicial boards. In this article, the author describes the benefits of having a student judicial board in fighting off plagiarism among students. She relates that although…