S.09-1O
For Information
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SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
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MEMORANDUM
To: ?
Senate
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From: ?
Dr. Robert Gordon, Chair
Senate Committee on Academic Integrity in Student Learning
and Evaluation
Re: ?
Final Report
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Date: ?
December 10, 2008
I am pleased to submit the Final Report of the Senate Committee on Academic Integrity
in Student Learning and Evaluation (SCAISLE).
Introduction
The Senate Committee on Academic Integrity in Student Learning and Evaluation was
created by Senate in 2005 and charged with the following responsibilities:
1.
To promote academic integrity and honesty in course work and evaluation
processes.
2.
To establish procedures that support, improve and ensure the standards and
- conduct of examinations and to update these procedures as necessary.
3.
To develop and update as necessary, a recommended statement on academic
honesty for use in course outlines.
4.
On an annual basis, to liaise with the University Board on Student Discipline
and the Senate Committee on Disciplinary Appeals to ensure the currency of
policies and procedures dealing with academic integrity and, when
appropriate, recommend to Senate revisions to the policies as required.
5.
To review and, where appropriate, make recommendations to the Senate
Graduate Studies Committee on supervisory practices that will promote
academic honesty and integrity.
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6. ?
To review and, where appropriate, make recommendations to the relevant
office or committee on revisions to graduate regulations or guidelines that will
promote academic honesty and integrity concerning intellectual property,
authorship and confidential research.
7.
To consider other issues relating to the general question of academic integrity
as it
applies
to courses and evaluation of student performance.
8.
To report annually in October to Senate on activities in the preceding year.
9.
To report to Senate in May 2008, and recommend whether the Committee
should continue or whether its responsibilities be transferred to another
Committee (or Committees) or Senate.
Membership
The first and only chair of the Committee is Dr. Robert Gordon, the Director of the
School of Criminology and a faculty senator. Drs. Hilmar Pabel, Evan Tiffany, and Peter
Tingling are faculty members at large. Other members are Mr. Joe Paling (undergraduate
student representative and student senator); Ms. Camilla Sears (graduate student), Mr.
Richard MacLeod (Student Services) and Ms. Elaine Fairey (Library). The secretariat is
Ms. Jo Hinchliffe, Assistant Registrar and Academic Integrity Coordinator. Mr. Brett
McCollum is the alternate graduate student representative.
The Committee would like to thank Drs. Alton Harestad and Sean Zwagerman, Mr. Larry
Wiebe (Faculty of Education), Dr. Dianne Whiteley from Student Services, Ms.
Josephine Wong, Ms. Karen Tse, and Mr. Derek Harder each of whom contributed
significantly to the work of the Committee and whose terms expired at various points
during the life of the Committee.
The Work of the Committee
SCAISLE scheduled, and usually held, monthly meetings from the Fall of 2005 onwards,
except in the months of July and August each year. In the Fall of each year, the
Committee discussed and approved an Action Plan for the following year based upon the
Committee's mandate and other important issues that had surfaced during the previous
year and were related to the mandate.
By the end of the first year of operations
(2005), SCAISLE had completed four tasks: a
review of the creation of the Academic Learning Centre in the library; a review of the on-
line plagiarism module created by the library; and a review of examination standards,
practices and procedures, particularly the adequacy of the facilities in which large
examinations were held. The Committee also began to develop standardized academic
honesty statements for use in departments and schools, the creation of a new incident
report form to streamline and standardize the processing of academic dishonesty cases,
the creation of a central data base in which to record academic dishonesty cases, a review
of the value, or otherwise, of"Turnitin.com
", and the development of a series of
workshops on academic dishonesty for TAs and faculty.
By the Fall of 2006,
SCAISLE had determined that the initial and continuing education
of students, faculty and teaching support staff was the key to preventing and reducing
instances of academic dishonesty across the campuses; consequently, a great deal of time
was spent exploring and developing appropriate strategies. Academic honesty statements
were drafted, tested, and circulated to both students and faculty/teaching assistants. In
addition, the Committee had drafted and tested a one page document addressing the issue
of ethical (and unethical) tutoring. These documents were to be posted on the Student
Learning Commons web site, and on the Committee's website which was under
construction. The Committee had also been involved in the development of academic
honesty materials for the Student Learning Commons which had built an extensive
collection of information for students and an academic honesty/dishonesty component
that included a link to a self administered test, developed by the Library, which
determined a student's level of knowledge about academic honesty policies and issues.
The Library had also developed an "exam bank" as an alternative to the unregulated
exam banks found in some departments.
The administration of the system for dealing with academic dishonesty cases had also
been reviewed and areas that needed improvement had been identified. A new, multi-
copy, academic dishonesty report form had been drafted to assist faculty in accurately
and more easily reporting cases to Chairs and Directors, and to the Registrar's office. A
second, multi-copy report form had been developed for use by Chairs and Directors.
The University's Code of Student Conduct had been reviewed and a new version,
amalgamating and amending the existing T10.01, 10.02 and 10.03 polices had been
drafted. At the request of the Registrar and other senior administrators, the draft was
being further revised to accommodate new student conduct issues and concerns (e.g.,
hazing, the possession of firearms on campus, and vexatious complainants). The revised
student misconduct portion of the Code was developed as a result ofajoint meeting of
the Committee and representatives of UBSD, SCODA, the Ombudsperson, SFUFA, the
Registrar's Office, and the President's Office. This proved to be an excellent exchange
of ideas-and concerns and is the seedbed of the new misconduct policies (found in the
revised T10.01 and T10.02) slated for presentation to Senate in February 2009.
The University's Code of Faculty Ethics had been subjected to a preliminary review and
plans made for further work during 2007. The Committee had also conducted a review of
examination standards and procedures and, in partnership with the Registrar's Office, had
developed a new set of policies and procedures for the conduct and supervision of
examinations, especially those to be held in the gymnasium.
The Committee had also started a review of the uses and value of Tumitin.com with the
goal of completing the review by the end of 2007. Committee members had also started
to offer workshops on academic dishonesty issues for new faculty and teaching support
staff, and had participated in academic dishonesty workshops at other institutions.
By the Fall of 2007,
the Committee had completed the revisions to the Code of Student
Conduct. This has involved an amalgamation of three existing policies, the addition of
new policies to deal with new areas of concern, and a redrafting of some of the academic
dishonesty provisions which were rather vague. A redraft had been completed and the
new draft policy had been circulated to affected individuals and groups for comments.
The Faculty Code of Ethics had been reviewed and a recommended amendment had been
forwarded to SFUFA for their consideration.
Incident report forms for faculty and for chairs and directors had been completed and
circulated to departmental academic integrity advisors and chairs and directors. The
forms were "multi-part forms" designed to reduce the amount of paperwork required to
report cases of academic dishonesty and thereby encourage faculty (and department
heads) to report cases. It was expected that the Forms would need further amendment
once they had been in use for a while.
The Committee had also recruited academic integrity advisors for each department,
thanks to the assistance of the Deans and department heads across all three campuses.
These faculty members were acting as academic honesty resource people for their
departments and their colleagues, responsible for educating and assisting their colleagues
with the interpretation and implementation of policy including the annual training and
education of new faculty and teaching support staff.
The system was being administered and coordinated by the Academic Integrity
Coordinator, Ms. Jo Hinchliffe, from the Office of the Registrar. The Coordinator is
responsible for receiving, filing and analyzing reports of academic dishonesty, organizing
and delivering the training of new departmental academic integrity advisors, organizing
bi-annual, campus-wide meetings of the advisers, and issuing periodic bulletins on
developments in the area of academic dishonesty. Ms. Hinchliffe had become a member
of the Centre for Academic Integrity, a university based, North America wide group that
focuses on ethics and academic integrity issues. She had also joined the Canadian
Academic Integrity and Student Judicial Affairs Division of CACUSS (the Canadian
Association of College and University Student Services), and was (and still is) serving on
the Association's Executive as the Western Representative. As a result of this
involvement, SCAISLE has been able to connect with other bodies addressing academic
integrity issues across North America and both benefit from and contribute to a sharing of
knowledge with colleagues.
The Committee had developed a resource kit for departmental integrity advisers,
including an adaptable power-point presentation to be used for training new faculty and
teaching support staff. The Committee had also reviewed ways of dealing more
effectively with on-line essay banks such as "Cheathouse.com ." This was a national
concern and the Chair of the Committee had conferred with the Canadian Association of
University Teachers to identify an effective strategy which could involve lobbying the
federal government with respect to some legal options.
The Committee had completed its review of the use of Turnitin.com
. It is clear that this
service is used by some faculty in a handful of departments and that it is used for more
than just the prevention and detection of academic dishonesty. This has been confirmed
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through a survey of faculty members, conducted in conjunction with SFUFA. Some
faculty felt that it is a valued resource, others were skeptical, but no one appeared to be
vehemently opposed. Faculty are not required to use the service and the Committee was
unable to find grounds for recommending prohibition of the service.
The Committee had started to publish short, hi-monthly, hard copy and ebulletins to all
faculty and teaching support staff about developments in policy and practice affecting
academic dishonesty issues. The bulletins include information on the types and
techniques of dishonest practice and are intended, in part, to alert faculty to the latest
"fads" as well as suggest ways of preventing and detecting dishonesty.
The Committee continued to be concerned that academic integrity be entrenched in the
process of graduate supervision. The Committee's work on this task began in 2005 and
has piggy-backed on an initiative originating with the Dean of Graduate Studies office.
The Dean's initiative was slated for completion by the end of 2007 but appears to be an
issue that is still in progress.
The Committee had hoped to review the extent to which academic dishonesty is an issue
in High Schools and the ways in which this could be stopped (e.g., by conducting
workshops for Grade 12 teachers during their professional days). The need for an
exploration of this issue was highlighted by the results of the Hughes/McCabe study
which showed that most university students who engage in academic dishonesty learned
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how to do so in High School. Although worthwhile, the scope of a review of this kind
was clearly beyond the capacity of the Committee which did not feel that it could be
completed in the time left for the Committee to finish its work. Nevertheless, two
Committee members - Ms. Hinchliffe and Ms. Fairey - have met with groups of High
School counselors and opened dialogues on academic integrity issues that show
significant promise. The matter has been flagged for possible future action by the Office
of the Registrar.
By the Fall of
2008, the Committee had completed the training of departmental academic
integrity-advisors and was in the process of identifying and training a second generation
of advisor. A system of advisors, overseen by the Academic Integrity Coordinator, is
now in place across the three campuses, and this system includes the regular production
of hi-monthly bulletins for faculty, teaching support staff and students, as well as the
development of additional strategies and techniques for ensuring that faculty are kept
informed of academic honesty issues and policy changes. To this end, the Committee has
built a website (httr)://students.sfu.calacademicinte g rity).
Special workshops for advisors
have been well attended and more are planned for 2009, particularly following the
adoption of the new policies affecting academic dishonesty and general misconduct.
The Committee has completed a full draft of a new Code of Student Conduct and related
Procedural Code which will be presented to Senate in February 2009. These new policies
have been subjected to a full, University-wide review and the final drafts reflect an
exhaustive (and exhausting) consultation process.
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The Committee's proposed amendment to the Faculty Code of Ethics (addressing faculty
responses to student academic dishonesty issues) has not yet resulted in a policy change.
The Committee is advised that while the proposal has been well received by SFUFA, any
change to the Code is a negotiated matter and will have to be dealt with in the next round
of SFUFAJSFU negotiations.
The Committee has developed a succession plan. When the Committee winds up on
January 31 2009 there will be a continuing need for some kind of small advisory group
to assist the Academic Integrity Coordinator and the Registrar with the continuing
implementation (and interpretation) of the new policy and procedure. The Committee has
recommended, to the Registrar, the creation of an Academic Integrity Advisory
Committee. The Terms of Reference for this Committee are attached.
Winding Up
The Committee had a recommended shelf life of three years. It was anticipated that most
of its tasks would be completed within the three years but by the Spring of 2008 it
became clear that additional time was necessary. Senate consequently extended the life
of SCAISLE to January 31 2009 with a request that a Final Report be submitted to
Senate at its January 2009 meeting. This is that Report.
In the Committee's view, a great deal has been accomplished since the Fall of 2005, and
accomplished with no budget. A new system for ensuring academic integrity is currently
in place and is shortly to be reinforced by new policies and procedures. This system,
which also involves no new fiscal resources,
should serve the University well for many
years, particularly if the new Academic Integrity Advisory Committee is appropriately
supported by the University administration.
Submitted to Senate.
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