Students drive integrity project with
survey and The CMU RedBook
Subheading Example
If you think there’s no way to get students
fired up about academic integrity, think again.
Last year, a group of CMU students took ownership in spreading the word to their peers about academic integrity on campus by creating a student handbook, a blog, and a Facebook group.
In a short time span, the campus is already buzzing about academic integrity. More than 100 students showed up to a campus forum last semester before finals, leading to a lively open dialogue about what cheating means and why it happens.
And more than 4,000 people logged on to take an online survey about academic integrity – the second most respondents nationwide of any survey administered by Center for Academic Integrity founder Don McCabe. McCabe has conducted his survey at more than 140 universities and has data from more than 135,000 students.
The tactics for strengthening the university’s culture of academic integrity all fall under a three-year, $40,302 CMU 2010 project led by philosophy professor Hope May. May said her mission has always been for students to take the reins on the project.
“Don McCabe’s research shows that if a university is going to change its culture, students need to be at the forefront,” she said.
Philosophy students challenged with project leadership
When May told her classes about the project, she sparked an interest for a group of students, including seniors Sandra Russell and Chris Allen and alumni Hailey Gibbons, ’07, and Jordan Schwartz, ’07.
“I always knew that academic integrity was a good thing, but it wasn’t really
at the front of my mind,” said Russell, a philosophy and English double major. “Now my friends think of me as an authority on academic integrity.”
One of the group’s first projects was to inspire students to take the
academic integrity survey. They accomplished their task by creating a
colorful flyer campaign throughout campus with the tagline, “Just take it.”
The students used the survey results to create content for The CMU Redbook, a handbook that explains CMU’s official academic integrity policy in student-friendly language, with some humor thrown in for good measure.
The handbook covers CMU’s policies regarding test cheating, plagiarizing, research, and group work.
One of the primary goals of the students was to explain to their peers why integrity is important. One section of the book says, “In addition to helping you to learn, studying could bring its own unexpected rewards. You could impress someone with your mastery of the subject matter, perhaps even get a date!”
“It was written to be more accessible to students,” said Allen, a philosophy and political science double major. The CMU Redbook “brings in more actual situations, but gets the same point across. It’s difficult not to come across as preachy. There’s a fine line – you don’t want to be lecturing students.”
May said that the group will repeat the survey in 2009. She already has received positive feedback from her fellow faculty members.
“The faculty have been very enthusiastic and happy. It’s something they’ve been wanting to talk to students about for a long time, and they’re very thankful that this issue is being addressed,” she said. “It’s becoming more a part of the culture, which remains our goal.”
Want to find out how to get copies of The CMU Redbook? Contact Hope May at may1he@cmich.edu. Keep tabs on the project at planning.cmich.edu. •
