Academic Integrity in Higher Education: Review and Application for Strategic Changes In Policy

Author: Gideon Linkous
Major: Math and Biology
Approved: Spring 2021
Status: In progress

Academic Integrity is an important part of academia, yet students are extremely susceptible to violations of these policies.  First, I will review data of which student groups are most likely to commit certain types of violations of AI policy; potential groups include, but are not limited to, first year students, first generation students, and international students. Current research on these types of violations will be analyzed to determine the reasons students commit these violations.  Once these two topics are covered, research will be cross analyzed to learn specific ways in which colleges have been able to better support these groups for the types of violations most likely to be committed.  I will also analyze general practices which have been shown to improve the understanding of AI policies and the moral understanding for why AI is important.  Based on this research, suggestions will be made for what kind of data should be collected for select issues in these groups.  From these data, a general template strategic plan will be designed to be adopted by colleges to better improve their own systems, focusing on smaller colleges where the relationship between faculty and students is more intimate and especially focusing on the specificity of AI issues at any given institution.  This template plan will then be applied to Roanoke College’s AI system, especially in regards to summary statistics given by Dr. Taylor and the AI council.  After such a specific plan is made, it will be presented to the AI council at Roanoke College for acceptance or for revision for application.