Code of Classroom Ethics

Every semester I begin my English classes with what I believe are clearly-stated expectations about academic integrity, cheating, and plagiarism. I always preface my comments with words that convey my regret about having to even discuss the issue because I like to believe that most students are honest. However, as a realist, I also understand that cheating in high school and college is, unfortunately, fairly common, and that as a college professor, I take it as one of my responsibilities to provide my students with a classroom atmosphere in which the opportunities to cheat are negligible.

No matter what I include in my syllabus, no matter what I say at the beginning or during the semester, no matter how carefully I design my assignments, no matter how often I demonstrate how to submit papers to SafeAssign, no matter how tediously I lecture on citation, documentation, attribution...I still encounter the occasional cheater. Last semester, near the beginning of the semester, one student actually copied another student's paper and submitted it as his own. Fortunately for this student, he had the rest of the semester to recover (points-wise), and he managed to pass the class. Then, at the end of the semester, a student from a different class submitted a final paper that was heavily plagiarized. Unfortunately for this student, who was already borderline points-wise, the 0 on this final paper did him in, and he did not pass the class.  

In both of these cases, the violations were detected thanks to SafeAssign. I'm sure I've missed other violations in the past, and I do find SafeAssign to be pretty inconsistent. However, in these two cases, the system seemed to work as it was designed to.

Why students cheat, and how to design my courses to discourage cheating, is a topic I need to revisit at a later time. But right now, as my new spring classes loom, I've got an idea. What if I began the semester by compiling a list of expectations related to academic integrity, a sort of code of classroom ethics, and presenting this list to the students along with my syllabus? I'd require them to sign or at least give assent to this code of ethics. Then, as the semester progressed, they'd have this document that I can refer them to, should they be tempted to game the system.

Some of the items I'd include (in no particular order), would be: 

• All assignments are to be original to this class. Previously written papers may not be reused, in part or in whole. 
•  While collaboration is encouraged for the purpose of sharing ideas and critiquing one another's work, copying, modifying, or otherwise adapting another student's work is cheating. 
• All assignments must be uploaded to the college's plagiarism detection tool (at Palomar, it's called SafeAssign). 
• Papers not submitted to SafeAssign will not be graded and will be marked down 10% per day late (including weekend days) until the paper is submitted. 
•  There is a zero tolerance for cheating in any form, and to any degree. That means any paper that has been copied, plagiarized, re-submitted from a previously-written paper, written by someone else, or that in any way, shape, or form, violates the standards of academic integrity which this college adheres to, will receive a 0 (not an F). 
• I reserve the right to report instances of cheating to the English department and/or the college itself, depending on the seriousness of the violation. 

 Students may learn more about plagiarism by visiting Plagiarism.org here.