“Our Cheating Hearts?” is in Year 2 of a three-year funding plan. During our first year of funding, 10 faculty members in the Faculty of Arts at UBC implemented and adapted curriculum materials related to academic integrity and its practices within their First-Year writing courses. We evaluated the impact of these materials on students’ learning through pre- and post- surveys with students both within these courses and those enrolled in other First-Year writing courses. Additionally, we conducted focus groups with these two subsets. Faculty were also surveyed both before and after the courses, and interviews were conducted with them at sporadic points throughout the year.
Through our preliminary data, we found that many (30%) students not in the courses with engaged learning on academic integrity had never heard of the term, and about half (50%) were either unaware that our institution had an academic integrity and/or misconduct policy or were aware, but did not know what it says nor where to find it. Further, through speaking with students in the courses with academic integrity materials, we learned that they referred to academic integrity as a moral and ethical code, allowing scholars to acknowledge and protect others’ and their own contributions to the field. Students not engaged with the materials, while were aware of its importance, generally held the viewpoint that academic integrity was about hard work, individual success, and a way to follow the rules of the university.
Faculty found not only a decrease in reported cases of academic misconduct (both from their own experiences and comparatively to other writing courses), but also that it was the first time students were openly engaging in conversations of academic integrity, academic misconduct, and plagiarism. Many offered that academic integrity as a framing for the course gave students a reason to care and invest themselves into the course community and project.
In our second year, we are scaling the project up to involve over 30 faculty members across more than 80 course sections. We will continue evaluation with students and faculty through previously mentioned methods. We are also looking into new ways to further evaluate students on practices that coincide with the values of academic integrity (e.g., paraphrase, summary). We also plan to host what we have called an ‘Academic Integrity Summit,’ to involve other Faculties and community members across the university, and think collaboratively on how they might integrate similar kinds of materials into their courses.