445 Cases of Misconduct at Technical College Dublin

Plus, more on Marquette and misconduct. Plus, Illinois State and dealing with misconduct issues.

Issue 82

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445 Cases of Plagiarism and Collusion at Technical College Dublin

Multiple outlets in Ireland are reporting on an upswing in cases of misconduct at Technical College Dublin - 445 cases since 2020.

What’s most interesting about this report is that most of the cases seem to be plagiarism and collusion. Throughout the pandemic, the consensus has been that incidents of plagiarism in particular have been consistent if not down slightly.

And lest there be any doubt about the link between increased reporting of misconduct and online programs, the Head of Academic Affairs at TU Dublin told one publication,

TU Dublin’s figures likely reflect the pivot to almost entirely online delivery and assessment in the date range specified.

Yup.

Also noteworthy, the school’s reports say that plagiarism checker Turnitin helped identify many cases of attempted dishonesty. And that:

In one incident, a student persistently denied plagiarism, but the original source of the assignment was subsequently found on the online site, coursehero.com. 

Course Hero - you don’t say.

More on Marquette and Misconduct

In Issue 81, I was hard on Marquette University and its President for penning a self-congratulatory opinion piece extolling the school’s commitment to integrity while simultaneously having their incidents of academic misconduct double and maintaining one of the weakest misconduct operations I’ve seen.

In any case, I also want to highlight a few points from the school’s misconduct reports which, again, the school deserves enormous credit for publicizing.

Marquette’s most recent report in July 2021 said:

[online assessment] especially made possible for students the use of multiple communication devices during virtual assessment, where one device (a computer) was aided by another (a phone or even a person). Even in classes where instructors took advantage of [the learning management system’s] randomization features, plus shrwed [sic] test-design decisions, there were reports of student misconduct.

In other words, here’s Marquette’s director of academic integrity saying online assessments correlated to cheating and, more importantly, that randomized test questions and smart test design did not eliminate cheating.

It doesn’t.

Those who insist that cheating is simply a downstream outcome of bad assessment practices are just incorrect. Improving assessment design is important and helpful. But it does not stop misconduct.

Another note from Marquette’s 2021 report hits on the inability of school resources to deal with the surge of cases - an underreported and significant and costly consequence of increased cheating. The report says:

The flow of the year’s and last summer’s cases (with another swell at the very end of the first semester) showed again how the AIC office’s processes do not scale well. With every AIC case defaulting to an average of nine Microsoft Word documents per student, plus innumerable email communications to at least six people, and the need to gather key data manually from University web sites, the office was pressed to receive, structure, and then process the many cases

Even permissive systems that routinely kick out cases with minimal consequence can’t keep up with the influx of cases. Schools that actually investigate and seek to hold students accountable have zero chance of doing it efficiently or well.

Handling Academic Misconduct at Illinois State

Today, Illinois State University was to host an online discussion on academic integrity featuring David Rettinger of the University of Mary Washington.

That’s great. I hope to find a copy of the presentations and share them.

It’s great because talking about integrity and misconduct openly and frequently is one of the best things anyone can do to prevent it. Conversely, hiding it, minimizing it, pretending it doesn’t happen actually encourages it.

So, since Illinois State was hosting this worthwhile topic, I decided to ask the school about its own cases - what kind of trendlines the school was experiencing over the past few years. I thought it would make a good side note to whatever Rettinger would discuss.

Here is the school’s reply to my query, from Rachel Hatch, the Assistant Director
of Media Relations at Illinois State,

Mr. Newton,

The University is closed until January 3. At that time, you can submit a FOIA request at publicrecords@ilstu.edu. 

In fairness, I asked on December 28, a Tuesday. And it’s entirely reasonable that any information would be delayed until the school was fully open again. But inviting me to file a public records request under the federal Freedom of Information Act is telling me to get lost.

I understand why schools don’t want to admit that cheating happens but, as mentioned, we cannot solve what we cannot discuss.

Note: “The Cheat Sheet” is day late and there’s no audio today because I’ve been sick and sound a bit like Kermit the Frog. And trust me, no one wants that. We will be back on schedule right away.

In response to the Best and Worst of 2021 Issue, several people asked about specific schools or incidents listed in the summary. The best thing to do is visit “The Cheat Sheet” homepage - thecheatsheet.substack.com - and under the large, main logo, use the search magnifying glass icon to search for any term in any Issue.

Also, in reviewing past Issues for the end-of-year thing, I’d noticed there’s an amazing amount of information in past issues on specific integrity topics such as linkage to online exams, punishment as deterrence, plagiarism specifically and so on. But none of it searchable, meaning it’s buried.

So, going forward, I’m going to try to add key terms to Issues - here at the bottom - with hashtags (#) so topics can be pulled together by anyone with the above-mentioned search feature. I’ll also work on way to make the list of tags available somewhere.

Tags from this Issue: #plagairism #collusion #assessmentdesign #randomized #onlineassessment #Ireland #disclose