by:
  Michael Donnelly,
  Rebecca Ingalls,
  Tracy Ann Morse,
  Joanna Castner, and
  Anne Meade
  Stockdell-Giesler

  An Ethos of Academic Integrity

Sherman argues that "academic integrity cannot be coerced, nor can it be taught except by example and the rigorous inculcation of a code of honor that is then internalized" (p. 91). The fact is that students today (even, as "Thompson" shows us, the most advanced doctoral candidates) don't necessarily have adequate models of integrity. The news is rife with accounts of misconduct at the highest levels:

• a President whose sexual misconduct is discounted as mere peccadillo
• corporate executives whose accounting practices put thousands out of jobs and leave them without retirement money
• journalists for the nation's most respected newspapers caught plagiarizing
• professors who lie about their credentials to get jobs.

These examples and the very existence, much less institutional adoption of, plagiarism prevention software communicates an open acknowledgement of rampant plagiarism and an assumption of guilt.

Americans acknowledge that we live in a time of decreased integrity. As a humanist, I believe that the solution must extend beyond the catch-and-punish phase. If I continue to use plagiarism prevention software, I will do so as a part of a comprehensive pedagogical approach to academic integrity. We must prevent the behavior from the start, not by requiring students to run their work through the intellectual equivalent of a metal detector; we must instill, foster, and inspire an ethos of academic integrity. We must call to account, even if only as classroom examples, these examples of misconduct we see in the larger society.

• Introduction
  Michael Donnelly
• Students Consenting to Turnitin.com: What Are We Asking When We Ask Them to Sign Away Their Work?
  Rebecca Ingalls
• Turnitin.com: A Teaching Tool
  Tracy Ann Morse
• Turnitin: Oversimplified Answer to a Complex Problem
  Joanna Castner Post
• Conclusion

• Introduction: A Writing Program Director's Dilemma
• Flying, Finally
• The Role of the WPA
• The Problems with PDS
• May the Conversation Continue...
• Dissimulation in the Writing Classroom
• The Devaluing of Growth?
• A Lack of Ethics
• An Ethos of Academic Integrity
• Students Consenting to Turnitin.com: What Are We Asking When We Ask Them to Sign Away Their Work?
• The Concept of Intellectual Property
• Roots of Consent
• Why "Consent" May Not Be Sufficient
• Turnitin.com: A Teaching Tool
• Responsibility for Writing
• A Focus on Revision
• Turnitin: Oversimplified Answer to a Complex Problem
• Skill and Creativity
• Self-Fulfilling Prophesies
• A Stimulus to Creativity
• Engagement and Success
• Conclusion
• References
• print version