Matthew Mitchell: This is Matthew Mitchell from the CTE and today I am with Heather Hogue and John Pettis. They're going to talk to us about academic integrity, which I thought was an interesting term because I usually think about as academic dishonesty or academic something else. The term they even chose was probably very purposeful and we'll learn about that. The way they've seen to have organized their committee, which is in two broad branches that we'll talk about, one is honor code violations and the other one is education and outreach. I don't really know what the difference is in terms of what they actually do. We'll learn a bit about that. Before we get started, this is really for USF faculty and I know both of you are very well known and famous individuals, but not everybody may know you. Really just to get the ball rolling, can you just tell us a bit about you, not really so much in terms of your research because that could go on for way too long, but in terms of what department you work in, what are typical courses you teach?
Heather Hogue: I'm in the history department and I also teach in international studies and African studies. I've been at the university since 2003. In that time, I have coordinated African studies and I'm currently directing international studies. The courses I teach are mainly focused on African history, environmental history and I do a suite of courses on food history, which is my [unintelligible 00:01:25] courses.
John Pettis: I'm in the department of psychology. We serve only undergraduates in our department and my areas of teaching focus on everything from general psychology and research design to abnormal psychology and then an advanced research topics on religion and spirituality and health, which is linked to my area of research.
Matthew: Fantastic. Thanks, both of you. What we're going to do in this interview, since I really don't know which one to go to all the time, I'm just going to ask the question and whoever reaches for the microphone, I will give them the microphone. This will be a little bit of a dance. My first question was already previewed in my introduction. Why is your committee called Academic Integrity? I'm guessing there's something purposeful about that. Can you tell us a little bit about what's entailed in that name and how we should conceptualize your committee a little bit?
John: Right. Previously, we were referred to as the Academic Honesty Committee and as we look at the best practices around the country at universities, colleges, institutions of higher learning, we as a committee really felt like academic integrity encompassed a broader range of behaviors and attitudes surrounding things like test-taking behaviors, but also citations, a broader range of different behaviors that related to the honor code. It was also something that a higher ministration agreed with us just in terms of framing it positively, in terms of, we want to promote integrity rather than just try to prevent cheating and dishonesty.
Heather: I would just add to that. It does reflect our peer institutions in general, in terms of academic institutions in the United States. Integrity, it tends to be the word and how it's being framed now. It also very much ties to our Jesuit identity and mission and philosophy. Again, that whole person, rather than just defining someone by an action. 
Matthew: Fantastic. Well, really my second question was also a little bit previewed in my intro. Could you tell us why there's two of you leading these efforts because there are these two branches that you have and maybe you could tell us about a bit about that and what's the most important aspects of each of your responsibilities? Really part of my reason for asking this is, one, curiosity, but the second reason is when certain things come up, it may be helpful for people listening to this to know who to reach out to.
Heather: A little background, when-- John and I have been involved with the committee for, is it three years now, and when we were asked to step into leadership, one of the things we wanted to do was to have more space to promote education and outreach and not just be a disciplinary body, although that is a key component of what we need to do. The academic integrity committee is charged with overseeing the honor code and that's a pretty large task. We decided that in order to be efficient, in order to be able to have the time devoted to education and outreach, there needed to be two of us and we both have different strengths and different interests. What we chose to do two years ago was reorganize the academic integrity committee into these two branches.
I oversee the honor code violation. When faculty or staff or students report an incident, it comes to me and we have a process that I make sure it gets properly addressed and taken care of. Then John oversees the development of the website and the various outreach activities, which I'll let him talk about.
John: Sure. We like to joke that Heather's the bad cop and I'm the good cop, we had to mention that. Part of what makes us makes our focus on academic integrity, as Heather mentioned, is not just on enforcement of the honor code, but the research suggests that to promote academic integrity, it has to be really about the institutional climate rather than management in each classroom on what the professors are doing. Part of that is making people aware of what we as a committee do and really promoting and encouraging them to report incidents, even if there are incidents that they handle individually in their own classroom.
Making them aware of who we are, what we do, but also to help promote evidence-based practices so they can promote academic integrity in their own classrooms, in their own departments and make them aware of what the latest evidence-based research has to say about promoting academic integrity.
Matthew: Fantastic. Now I'm going to go to bad cop question. You don't have to respond. I mean, both of you can respond, but I'm wondering if you can talk about, based on your experience, both in your leadership roles now, but also your past experience with this committee. What seemed to be the most common honor code violations by students? What's the most common things that come up?
Heather: The most common recently is plagiarism and we're in a world in which there's a lot of cutting and pasting [laughs], turnitin.com. Many faculty are using it now, which is wonderful. I would say plagiarism, sometimes intentional, sometimes not. That's where the educational component comes in. We also see incidents surrounding confusion in terms of what is appropriate collaboration, what is not. There have been cases coming up with online quizzes and group work, where students are supposed to work together and then submit certain things separately. Those types of cases.
It's really hard to say what's the most common because what we're actually seeing is there's a new landscape. A lot of my time in relation to the committee is talking with faculty members about cases that this paper may be ghostwritten. How do we find out, how do we track that if there's actually the students? I think I work very closely with Ryan Garcia and the Student Life Office. I think he would also agree that there really aren't any straightforward cases, but to answer your question very simply, plagiarism, it tends to be the most reported incidents, whether or not that is reflective of student activity or if it's just the easiest to spot because of the tools we have now.
Matthew: You brought up a few things that were just at least interesting to me. One of them is unintentional plagiarism. Actually, I know what you mean by the term and I can easily see how that could happen. I'm wondering-- Well, I'm not sure quite how to ask this question. I'm wondering if you could take us through the arc of how you handle something like that, because-- Okay. This is what I imagine, that the faculty member may think or may not make the distinction, they're just seeing plagiarism. Somehow in the process, you discover somehow it's unintentional plagiarism. I'm actually now stuck. I go, "Oh, well, how are they going to handle that? Are there things I could have done as the faculty member that maybe could have helped you tease out things quicker, faster?"
Heather: Maybe the best thing to do is to walk through the process. Faculty, staff and students can report an incident through the website we have, which is usfca.edu/academic-integrity.
John: It's a beautiful website.
[background conversation]
Heather: Thanks, John, for that and others. Report an incident and there's two ways to report it or two classifications. For violations review, if it's something that is either severe, if the faculty member has decided it's severe or more complicated or just for reporting purposes and that's just to let us know what has happened. I'll bracket that for a moment. When it comes to, what often happens is I often get an email from faculty before they report it to say, "This is what happened. How do I handle this?" What we always encourage is that conversation between the faculty member and the student. That, to us, is the most important thing because that is the learning process. That is the time when you can sit down as a faculty member and say, "You did not properly cite these sources. Do you understand what I mean by that?" and have that conversation. Quite often, that occurs before a faculty member will actually report the incident. Then they'll report it just to say, "This is what's happened." Our goal is to have that conversation, to encourage that conversation between the faculty member and the student, to see what could be cleared up there, as well as to follow up on cases that it's not necessarily unintentional.
The learning curve is hard, especially when we have students who are coming from different backgrounds, different educational institutions, different cultures. What we would like to do is promote that conversation and then have these incidents resolved at the course level in which a faculty member can say, "Okay, I talked to the student, this is-- We now have some clarity, they're being held accountable. They're either getting a lower grade or I've told them I'm reporting it for our purposes", so we have a record of it. Really, encouraging the faculty members to resolve things at the course level because that's where that education and that learning actually happens.
Matthew: This leads to a follow-up question, actually a couple, but one of the followup questions is, I would imagine in some of those cases where you encourage the faculty member to resolve it inside the class, that they essentially come back to you and say, "Okay, I'm happy to do that, but I'm not sure what's the best way to approach this." I have to imagine part of what you're dealing with at times is coaching faculty about how to best deal with this kind of difficult conversation.
Heather: Yes [chuckles], and as someone who has had those difficult conversations with students as well, the encouragement that I can give, some suggestions and some resources. I also always offer to meet with students as well to, if the faculty member would like that- someone else to help explain this. We also have on the website section for faculty with a lot of suggestions as to how to somehow avoid this with the cultural aspects, how do you run a class, how do you frame assignments, devoting time to discussing citation and what's appropriate and not.
We're trying to provide those resources both individually as they, as faculty contact us or but have them available at the website. In addition to that, there's a section for students that has resources that faculty can direct students to and what we are hoping, and I'll let John talk more about that, but hoping is that faculty will begin to direct students through, in their classes, to these resources. There's a quiz they can do. There's all the citation information so that we can avoid that very awkward conversation because we've included these resources and talked to students about it before they've submitted papers and stuff.
Matthew: Based on what you're saying and given that the website essentially has just recently opened. For me, what you're saying is one of my strategies is when I write my syllabus this up, for my classes next semester, I'm going to include a link to the academic honesty website in that particular section. I really directly encourage students to look at the parts that's for them-- Sorry, that's not going to take care of all my responsibilities, but that's- but you're giving me as an extra tool that I can put in my syllabus right away. I think what you're already expressing, if I say in my syllabus, "Well, I'm expecting you to be honest, I'm expecting you not to plagiarize."
Those are coherent words, it's in a coherent sentence, but it really may not deliver the message in the concrete way it needs to be. Having the ability to automatically help my students by referring them to the website and giving them a link is a really great extra tool.
John: I think in addition to directing students to the website, part of what can help promote academic integrity is just professors taking the time to discuss the criteria and the guidelines around the assignments. Emphasizing academic integrity, we find that according to the research that a good percentage of students may end up plagiarizing when they get to a point where they're really stressed, they're under the gun, they feel like there's no other alternative and helping them to do time management as well as proper citation.
I've had a number of students look very surprised when they find out about the concept of self-plagiarism. That's the idea that you can't use part or all of the paper from one class for another one.
They think, "Well, it's my paper. Why not?" Right? These are areas where they might just be unaware and some education and guidelines. Again, the more the professor actually talks about this and integrates it in the classroom, the more it serves to promote proper citation, as well as academic integrity and other domains as well.
Matthew: Yes. because I have to imagine with some of these things, there's a huge difference between intentional, like the person essentially knows it's wrong. It doesn't even matter what the thing is, but I would imagine there's a lot of cases where it is truly honestly unintentional, they're what we would say clueless, but I have a large role into cluing them in.
John: Even if you think about the intentional side, part of the resources that we offer for faculty in the scholarly research is there are evidence-based interventions, some of them very simple, that can even discourage people who may have the intention of cheating to adhere more towards academic integrity. There are things that they can do to make them be more honest in their assignment, maybe if they're thinking about being dishonest. Again, I think the broader message is we really need to establish an institutional climate of academic integrity, but we're also trying to give the faculty some tools in the classroom as well. For those research nerds who like the research articles that point to the exact study that was done to show how they promoted more honest behavior, we have citations for those as well as abstracts where they can actually look up the original research.
Matthew: Both super nerds and regular people will be satisfied.
[laughter[
I know people can go to the website and get more detail, but for right now, could you give an example of one or two evidence-based practices that might serve as good preventative medicine, for lack of a better term?
John: Sure. Actually, I can give an example of what one of our professors does right here in psychology, Ed Munich, as a cognitive psychologist. Sometimes right before a test, actually just making the honor code and people's values salient to them before taking a test can be a very simple intervention to make them more honest, even if they were thinking about not being honest. For example, he gives them a statement about, "Think of God or someone whom you really respect" and reminds them of the honor code and the Jesuit values of the institutions and has them sign it.
That very simple act reminds them of their values that they have and why they came to USF and can serve as a deterrent to people who might think about cheating, but just making that more salient in their mind, they're going to be thinking of themselves, "Well, yes, I'm an honest person. I'm not going to copy or cheat off of somebody." Another very simple intervention or framing, if you will, in terms of framing, was one study that was done that looked at just how you frame that type of behavior, if someone cheats. Just simply framing it in terms of "Don't be a cheater" versus "Don't cheat.", they found that in those two conditions, when the term was used, "Don't be a cheater.", they were much less likely to cheat then in conditions where you're telling them, "Don't cheat."
One is really personalizing the behavior because what happens is a lot of times people really distance themselves from the behavior. Sometimes, even in climates where it might seem like the professor is really allowing it to happen, some research suggests that the students aren't blaming the student who's taken advantage of that, they're blaming the teacher and they're saying, "Well, he's allowing this climate." They almost feel, "I have to cheat because this is the environment that's been created." It's really a twisted set of morals around that. That's some of the thinking that goes around that sometimes. There are sometimes very simple interventions that can be done at the classroom level to promote more academic integrity.
Matthew: Thanks. Those are great examples because they are really simple to do and yet, if they have an impact, well, why not do them? Or something similar, it doesn't have to be exactly the same thing. One of the things, I think it was Heather who brought this up earlier and then I wanted it to come back to it. From the naive faculty perspective, if there's something serious going on, I may want your help, but if there's something else that I consider a problem, but I can resolve it in class and I have no particular worries, what you indicated is people can go to the website and essentially report bad behavior, I'm going to simplify it here. Why should I be reporting bad behaviors, if I resolve everything within the safe confines of my class? What's the purpose of that? I'm a busy individual and now you're making me do more work.
[laughter]
Heather: Well, we have purposely tried to streamline it so that we are available. It could be as time-consuming as you want, but that it is very straightforward. That, checking that box that says, "For reporting purposes only", when you pull up that incident form, and there's a space where you explain what happened, give the details and also say what you did to resolve it. "I met with the student, I explained the proper citation formats" and we have a record of that. Our intention is to cut down on repeat offenders and to actually have those conversations the faculty and students have, are going to be documented so that if that student is reported by a different faculty member next semester, we can say, "You've already been notified that this is not appropriate. This is what happened."
Once the faculty member submits that for reporting purposes, I automatically get the report as does Ryan Garcia and Student Life.
John: It's not anonymous.
Heather: It can be anonymous. We've actually had cases where students have reported other students anonymously, so it can be. We highly encourage faculty to report and to report specifics as to what's happening in their class. When the students report, it's a slightly different game because of the circumstances. Once that faculty reports, I get a notification as does Ryan and we review it to see if it is a straightforward case. He has access to the database and so he can see if that student has been reported before. If the student- it's the first offense and it is something that is considered, for lack of a better word, minor, unintentional plagiarism.
"I had that conversation. I allowed them to rewrite the paper and so we're good but I want to let you know what happened." If it is that first incident on the student, the student will receive a notification letter that will detail, "This has been reported, this is what happened. You got the opportunity to rewrite." It has some educational language in there, offers my contact for any conversation. It also tells the student that if they are not reported again, this is what I call the no harm, no foul. We keep a copy of it, but it is entirely expunged at the time of their graduation.
It's a notification, there's also the- their right, and the process to appeal, if they want to appeal that incident report. This is just to keep them on that this was, we took it seriously. If that student has already been reported, if it's the second or other violation, it automatically triggers an investigation by the Academic Integrity Committee. Then we kick it up to the next level and I put together a committee that is one faculty member, one staff and one student representative. They review the case, interview, look at all the other documentation, interview the student and the faculty, and then recommend perhaps a more serious sanction.
There's multiple levels, reporting and so we can keep track of these incidents in the database, is our way of really cutting down on repeat offenders and seeing which students need some intervention. Our goal is to be able to, in the next year or so, developed some more seminars around academic integrity so that they'll be on places where faculty and the Academic Integrity Committee can direct students, hold them accountable saying, "Okay, you've had this incident reported, we want you to attend this two-hour workshop." We're trying to, again, be able to offer the educational resources, to not just be punitive but we can't do that unless we can identify and hold students accountable.
Matthew: Heather, I'm going to do the really bad thing and completely oversimplify what you were saying but for me, the current instructor, the incentive for reporting is really so I can support my other colleagues in the future. If I don't do that, I'm letting a potential repeat problem go on and on and on because they've never reached 0.1, because I didn't do my civic duty is what it amounts to.
Heather: Well, and I would add to that. Not only do we all work in community, and so we should be on the same page, but it's also you're letting the student down. I also see it as what I have seen in the last couple of years in this position is realizing that often, an academic integrity incident and report of it is a cry for help. It is something else that's going on. A student is overwhelmed. There are things happening. By notifying us, because Ryan Garcia and Student Life has access to the database and conduct reports as well, it really does identify students who need more help. It has led to counseling.
It has led to other things. Not to sugar coat it too much. It's important for faculty to support each other but it's also, I think a responsibility we have to students, to not only hold them accountable but to also see these academic integrity issues as part of the larger context and it does identify students who need some more support.
John: I'll also say this, since I've been in this position on this committee, I've seen a number of incidents where something was reported and it could be a fairly severe intentional incident and it may be a first offense, but anecdotally, it's reported by people who know the student well, this happened before but it wasn't reported and we can't treat that as a second offense, as an academic integrity committee. It is part of, as I said before, establishing this institutional climate around academic integrity, which as you said, is really part of supporting your colleagues.
Matthew: Fantastic. You really added some nice explanation to this that I wasn't thinking of immediately. On your website, under the faculty resources there's like, I don't know how to term them. There's a little thing that goes into plagiarism, into cheating and into accurate citations. That actually caught my attention. Not so much the plagiarism. I expected that, the cheating, I expected that. Why does accurate citations get such a highlight at your website? What's the story there?
John: I think this is really discipline-specific. I can give my own example from psychology because it may be very different than history or literature or English.
[background conversation]
Basically, in psychology, a lot of the time we really encourage students to summarize findings in their own words. We minimize direct quotes, which is different than some other fields where they're using quotes all throughout the paper and we say, "Well, we want you to synthesize and understand the material." Basically, we're not dealing with this famous psychologist from a hundred years ago. We're talking more about more recent research. We want them to be able to paraphrase or put the findings into their own words, integrate it and cite it properly. They may be pulling it from another source, not citing it properly.
The goal is to teach them that skill. If they're not providing a citation, then that's basically plagiarism. There are really a number of different disciplines that have their own particular way of citing. This is a very common form of plagiarism, is an improper citing or not giving the author proper credit for the idea.
Heather: Well, then I would also add false citations. That's, if you're following what's happening in the Japanese scientific research community right now, we're trying to institute this conversation on campus here, where one place, but it is part of a broader context, not only in research communities and academic institutions, but in journalism and media. Our students are coming of age in a very confusing time in terms of what is appropriate and what is not. They can sample music, and in a song, is that plagiarism? We might think it is from our training. It's also highlighting how to accurately and appropriately cite material and how do you give credit. I think it's actually very important to instill in students that this is something that is important if you're going through an academic career and institution, but in jobs, as well in the broader context in which we're all living now.
Matthew: Fantastic. Well thank you both of you, through this, you've already answered some of the questions I had on a list and I really didn't have to formally ask you, but I've just essentially asked the best questions I knew how, but there might be some other issues that faculty should be aware of that I haven't really asked the right question yet and yet you're aware that you'd like to communicate it to faculty. Are there any floating issues or points you'd like to make that I didn't know to prompt you about?
John: Well, I also want to point out that as a committee that both intends to enforce the academic honor code as well as to promote academic integrity through education and outreach. We also want to emphasize that the student does have rights around this and they do have the right to refute an accusation. Part of what we're there for is also to protect the student as well and to hear the student's side. If it is something with which the student disagrees in terms of an allegation, they have an avenue to dispute that and that's very important in terms of protecting the student's rights.
Heather: I would underscore that, that we do take the Honor Code very seriously. We are constantly kind of reviewing it to make sure that it is appropriate and kind of moves with the situation what's happening here but we are also advocates for the students, that's right, and I said before, I'm happy, we're happy to meet with them as well and we really want this dialogue to be positive, it can be very nasty, and ugly. We're trying to avoid that by offering the resources both for faculty and students and, so hopefully, in the near future, you'll be hearing more about this. We will be communicating with departments and with schools, with various deans to kind of get the word out so people have the resources and that we protect both the student rights as well as the faculty academic freedom.
We, as we said, can highly encourage people to report, we want them to, but we also want to protect kind of what happens in the classroom and how we each do interact with students and the approach we have to our classes. We're trying to see ourselves and trying to position ourselves as resources. We have representatives from all the schools and colleges we cover. College of Arts and Sciences, School of Management and Businesses Management, education, as well as nursing. We have committee members who can also be resources, and visit departments and have conversations with faculty, so that we can get the word out.
John: One other thing I would mention is you had talked before about the opportunity cost of reporting, but I also think there's another element behind the apprehension and maybe even sometimes fear about reporting and it's on a couple of levels. One may be, how is this going to impact something like the dynamics of teaching evaluations? There's another aspect to that there might be a fear apprehension, like, "I've taken care of this, I don't want the committee coming in and imposing something harsher than what I'm doing" and that's understandable.
I think part of what our education is about us swaging some of those fears, because, we can't guarantee that it's not going to impact somebody's teacher ratings. That's something usually handled at the course level, but most of the time, it is successfully handled at the course level and we encourage that, we feel like that's the best forum for dealing with those things. We are not going to come in and impose or recommend a sanction that's more severe if it's a first offense, but if it's a multiple offense, then it's something that we'll investigate and again, the committee's role is not as an enforcer. We make recommendations. We don't enforce these sanctions.
They're recommended to the provost office and then the provost makes a decision about it but again, I can't emphasize enough that it's really an important part of establishing a community that holds academic integrity as a core principle. That's really what promotes academic integrity across the institution and people have to be able to have some courage sometimes to report it and deal with issues like that, despite some of the fears they may have, but we're here to support faculty. Again, most of the time, it's resolved at the course level, and we just document it for our database.
Matthew: Fantastic. Well, thank you both of you for the generosity of your time and I love that- the name change, by the way, because it really, you obviously put some thought into it, but you know, that slight name change makes a big difference. Just the way you've conceptualized putting this all together is really a big improvement, I think. Thank you very much and that's it.
John: Thank you.
Heather: Thank you.
[00:34:02] [END OF AUDIO]


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