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Table 2 Selected Recommendations, Strategies, and Responses for Policy and Procedures

From: Recommendations for a balanced approach to supporting academic integrity: perspectives from a survey of students, faculty, and tutors

Recommendations

Strategies

Responses

Ensure clarity in procedures and policy

Provide clear and consistent definition(s) of plagiarism, including what could be considered unintentional in the policy

… on several instances, school official stated that if there was any indication that the student intended to cite the source, student would not be charged with plagiarism (for example no quotations on a lengthy quote- but included citation consistent with paraphrasing

Clarity about to whom to report

Ensure responsibilities and workflow actions are clearly described in policies and procedures

More standardized methods of detection

In The Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, we have a policy that dictates plagiarized assignments be sent to our AU program director for review and consequences. This works extremely well, and the policy should be applied across the institution

Clarify the tutors’ role and distinguish it from that of the person to whom the tutor reports

 

Not all tutors are aware of the procedures required when academic misconduct is detected. It’s not solely the tutor’s responsibility to mete out punishment, either since the offense should be brought to the attention of the person in your department that handles all academic offenses. This way, there can be a note made on the student’s file for future reference or if a pattern develops

Clarity regarding consequences

Reconsider the “penalty” of allowing a student found committing academic misconduct to rewrite a paper

Mete out harsher penalties

The end result was that the student was permitted to re-write the assignment, which I then had to grade. It felt insufficient given the particular scope of the plagiarism in this specific case

Punishments for students who cheat should be very severe

Failing to cite someone else’s ideas is of course theft, but using the wording of a CITED source should more properly be regarded as sloppy, lazy writing (and awarded a commensurate grade) than reacted to as a serious crime

Clarity about evidence required

Provide PD for faculty/tutors on what constitutes plagiarism

Cheating in distance education can be hard to prove. As a tutor, I can tell if someone is cheating from regularly dealing with the assignments, but a course coordinator who does not deal with the assignments can be more hesitant to accept that someone is cheating

I strongly recommend that our univesrity [sic] acquire plagiarism software. The primary reason tutors don’t catch plagiarism is that they are too busy, and following up on it creates too much hassle

Instructors should be better versed in the concept of plagiarism