International Conference on Computer Systems and Technologies - CompSysTech’2006 VIEWS OF ACADEMICS ON ACADEMIC IMPROPRIETY: WORK IN PROGRESS Dr. Karl O. Jones, Dr. Juliet M. V. Reid and Dr. Rebecca Bartlett Abstract: As part of an ongoing investigation into levels of cheating amongst university students, the authors have surveyed the opinion of university lecturers on various practices that may be considered academic impropriety. This paper presents some of the early results of this “Work In Progress”. The intermediate findings of the work indicate that there is still much work to be undertaken to identify exactly what constitutes unacceptable academic practices. Furthermore, there is a lot of work to educate academics on current definitions of academic impropriety. Keywords: Academic impropriety, academic staff, opinions. INTRODUCTION All forms of academic impropriety are areas of growing importance within Higher Education Institutions internationally. The present study forms part of a large-scale survey aiming to address the prevalence of a range of forms of academic practice in universities. The present article addresses lecturer’s views regarding: the acceptability of a range of academic practices; whether such practices provide students with an unfair advantage; and, university policies and processes. There is a growing body of evidence that University students do ‘cheat’, that is, engage in academic practices considered improper by the University [1]. There is also considerable belief (for example, [2]), and some empirical evidence ([3] & [4]) that such cheating is on the increase. Of all the practices of academic impropriety, the one that causes most puzzlement amongst students is plagiarism, since they are often confused as to what does and does not constitute plagiarism. Thus, a clear definition of plagiarism is extremely important to have: an appropriate source is the Oxford English Dictionary which states: “To take and use as one’s own the thoughts, writings or inventions of another” (OED) Some key features of the definition are: (a) it is not just “borrowing” someone else’s work, but also “pass it off” as one’s own; and (b) it is not limited to textual material, but any ‘works’ including music, art, diagrams, design, software code, and so on. The definition also covers close paraphrasing as well as verbatim copying. One would expect that University lecturers would not be subject to this confusion, however the authors’ informal discussions with colleagues would suggest otherwise. Furthermore, there appears to be little published material addressing this issue. This provided the rationale behind this work. QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN The three page questionnaire designed asked staff for their views on a set of statements. The first page provided a list of practices which might be considered as forms of cheating, with respondents answering Yes, No or Unsure. The second page addressed whether the aforementioned practices provided students with an unfair advantage over their peers, with response choices of Yes, Sometimes, Unsure and No. The final page dealt with broader issues such as beliefs, policies and procedures, with respondents selecting from a five point scale (Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Strongly Disagree, Disagree). The staff sampled came from departments of Electrical Engineering and Psychology at a UK university. - IV.8-1 -