Why Academic Integrity?

Academic integrity and academic ethics concern all of us -whether we are students, faculty, or administrators.  But this is not all.  Academic integrity ought to concern society in general since it very well might be the case that the habits ingrained in students (and in faculty) in their academic endeavors spill over into both their public and private lives.

Granted, we live in a society in which it often seems that all that matters is the "bottom line" and in which "the ends justify the means."  We all know, or at least we all should know, that this is not what we wish from others - or from ourselves.  When you think about it this way, it is apparent, too, that academic ethics apply just as much to faculty as they do to students. 

Our attention as faculty members often, if not usually, turns to the behavior of students in testing and research contexts.  We employ means such as the use of turnitin.com and Google searches to try to find out when (after the fact) our students have plagiarized some, most, or all of the papers they submit for classes; we create multiple versions of multiple choice and true/false examinations in an attempt to ensure that cheating is minimized or unlikely to occur.  (To be clear about this, there is no way to ENSURE that students will not cheat or plagiarize, and there is no foolproof method to detect it when it happens.)  There are other means to be used as well, and there are probably as many means to attempt to stem the tide of academic dishonesty as there are means to engage in it.

At some point, however, we ought also to look at ourselves, at our behaviors, and at our teaching methods to see whether we are contributing to the very problems we are so intent on solving.

In the pages linked from this site, you will find various positions from faculty members and students who are engaged in a project to offer faculty-created and faculty-led seminars in academic ethics for faculty, and student-created and student-led seminars in academic ethics for students.  Their approaches are different in some ways; their concerns do not always converge.  What they do, however, is indicate some ways in which both faculty members and our students have conceived of the problems and proposed solutions to them from the point of view of obligations, responsibilities, methods, and approaches to academic ethics and integrity.

 

Core Commitments at UCF

The UCF Core Commitments grant includes a number of UCF-based projects, including:

  • UCF on-campus ethics bowl competitions for undergraduate students in all disciplines
  • Student involvement in Ethics Task Force Participation
  • Faculty Development
  • Philosophy and Information Fluency Annual International Multidisciplinary Conferences
  • Student-run and Student-led Academic Integrity Seminars
  • Interactive Performance Lab Research in "EthicsBox" Scenarios

Please see http://ucfcorecommitments.wordpress.com for more information and how you can be involved.