Misconduct Cases at Penn Still Elevated, But Drop Significantly
Plus, Kent State drops "room scans" during remote exams. Plus, a whistleblower on essay mills in Australia.
Issue 154
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University of Pennsylvania’s Annual Misconduct Report: Numbers Decline, Though Still Higher
The University of Pennsylvania released its annual report on student conduct recently, showing a nice decline in year over year numbers, though incidents are still above pre-pandemic levels.
Overall, the school reported that it had 265 cases of academic misconduct in the 2021-22 academic year. That’s a steep drop from the 465 it reported the year before (see Issue 128). At the same time, 265 is slightly more than the school reported in 18-19 and 19-20 which were 208 and 244 respectively.
Coverage of the report noted that cases of “cheating” declined from 222 to 121:
after returning to in-person instruction.
As we’d mentioned before, it’s probably unwise to invest too much in the category breakdowns of conduct. Nonetheless, Penn also says that incidents of “unauthorized collaboration” went from 117 to 18. Something is up there. And while cheating was down, cases of plagiarism were up - from 39 to 53. It’s also interesting that cases of “facilitating academic dishonesty” were also up - from 25 to 39. Just interesting.
With 265 cases, Penn says they issued 20 warnings, suspended one, made no transcript notations and expelled none. Fifty-seven received probation and 60 were issued a sanction of “Decision-Making Tree.”
Make of that what you will.
The topline drop is not that surprising considering that back in December Penn professors were already saying that returning to the classroom “eliminated academic integrity concerns” (see Issue 76). That’s still funny. And it obviously meant that things were returning to normal - the school catching just about the same amount as before, probably in the same ways as before.
And here’s where I remind you that something like one in ten incidents of cheating is caught and not all of those make it to formal cases.
Even so, good for Penn for releasing their report. More schools should. In fact, all schools should and accreditors should require it.
Kent State University Drops Reviews of Remote Test Settings
The school paper at Kent State University reports that the school has decided to drop reviewing the testing environments of those taking online assessments.
The decision, the paper said, was in response to the recent Cleveland State University ruling which found that an environment scan, as CSU administered it, violated a student’s rights provided by the Fourth Amendment (see Special Edition 2 for details).
The reporting cites an e-mail from the school’s senior vice president and provost which said:
“Room scan functionality for Proctorio and ProctorU has been disabled and will no longer be accessible. Additionally, the ‘Environmental Check’ function within the Respondus Monitor software is no longer permitted”
I assume there are very smart people at Kent State, but this seems like a very poor decision, all things considered.
Since much of the CSU decision was based on the fact that Cleveland State did not require the “room scans” as a policy and therefore could not prove they were important to academic integrity, discontinuing the practice wholesale would seem to make it difficult to use it later.
Either way, as mentioned in the Special Edition, it’s going to be much, much easier to take an online test than an in person one at Kent State.
Whistleblower Exposes More Essay and Assignment Cheating in Australia
According to coverage in the Daily Mail, an essay writer based in Kenya is talking about his work doing assignments for Australian college students - and it’s alarming.
The reporting is based on a new magazine story in The Australian, which requires a subscription. So, I did not access it.
In the Daily Mail story though, the new informant works for a Chinese company called Assignment Joy. Here’s a graph from that story:
The 'academic writer' labelled the Australian education system a 'sham' and said he was concerned by some medical students as they never completed an assignment during their degree.
The writer was quoted as saying:
I have some students who I have worked for since their first year and I've done all the assignments until they graduate, just pass and get all the grades.
He told the magazine that 60% of his clients were “cashed-up Chinese foreign students” And, from the Mail:
Fraudulent assignments were written for students at the countries top universities including, the University of Sydney, the University of Melbourne, and the University of Queensland, papers obtained by The Australian showed.
The paper says Assignment Joy supposedly employs “thousands of people.” And:
students gave their university login details to the ghostwriter allowing them to handle assignment and homework submissions for the entire course.
In an assignment for Diet and Nutrition for Health and Sport at the University of Sydney, one ghostwriter logged into the student's online portal after being guided through the security verification via Chinese messaging app WeChat.
The ghostwriter downloaded the material to 'discuss the energy demands of an elite level athlete' using 'comparison data on the average Australian and the elite athlete'.
The 2,500 word paper was submitted via email the next day and the student was charged US$133 by Assignment Joy.
The schools said, of course, that they were “extremely concerned” and that they “take all allegations of academic misconduct seriously.”
ICAI Announces Annual Conference
The International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI) has opened registration for its 2023 conference:
We hope you will join us in-person on March 10-12, 2023 at the Westin in Indianapolis, IN. Register today to take advantage of the discounted early bird registration rates available through December 31, 2022.
Details and registration here: https://academicintegrity.org/events-conferences/annual-conference
Class Notes
Give me a Break - The next Issue will be out on Thursday, October 6. Probably.
Policy Project - I’m trying to collect, review and analyze academic integrity policies, with a focus on remote testing and proctoring, and plagiarism. If you know of an academic integrity policy or practice guide that you think is good or innovative or outstanding in some way and would share it, please do. A reply e-mail reaches me. Thank you.