What qualifies as academic dishonesty? Do students in todays high-technology world understand cheating?
Andi Stein, assistant professor of communications, was so upset when she learned that students from her class had used copy from a bookstore website without attribution, she decided to bring the rightful author to class for a discussion on the issue. The experience prompted her to survey approximately 300 communications students about different aspects of academic integrity, including use of material from the Internet. “Survey results revealed that in some cases students are very clear about practices that constitute breaches of academic integrity – cheating on tests, for example,” said Stein. “In other cases, however, student responses indicated ambiguity about certain issues – such as cutting and pasting information from the Internet, or taking a writing assignment completed for one class and submitting the same assignment to another class.” The researcher noted that “students have wide-ranging opinions about the availability of information on the Internet and how far they can go in
