According to preliminary data, the number of academic integrity violations handled by the Office of the Dean of Students surged during this past spring semester, breaking a three-semester decline in such cases.
This spike comes at the end of the University's first full academic year under the newly-implemented Duke Community Standard. The refurbished honor code emphasizes peer responsibility for reporting instances of dishonesty, the opportunity for faculty-student resolution of violations and greater flexibility in sanctions. Increased reports of violations, however, are not necessarily linked to either the new standard or the sheer number of incidents.
The 37 cases involving academic integrity which the Dean of Students' office handled in Spring 2004 were the most since Fall 2002, when 39 such cases were reported. In Spring 2003 the Dean's office dealt with 23 instances of academic dishonesty, and in Fall 2003 that number dropped to 14.
Outside of the 51 cases that the Dean of Students' office presided over during the past academic year, 11 additional cases were handled through one-time faculty-student resolutions, a facet of the Community Standard that allows first-time offenders the option of avoiding a trip to the Dean's office.
Many cases arising this past semester came near its end and occurred in groups. "I had a lot at the end, a flurry of cases," Assistant Dean for Judicial Affairs Stephen Bryan said, recalling one case in which five students in an engineering class of about 50 were accused of submitting the same code.
In most cheating situations, the student is reported by a professor or teaching assistant. Although the Community Standard emphasizes a "no-tolerance" policy toward academic dishonesty among students, very few report their peers, Bryan said.
"We're probably not at the culture yet where [students are likely to report one another]," he added.
Bryan said that the cases were divided among plagiarism on papers, "good old-fashioned cheating" on tests and assignments and re-submitting altered work to take advantage of regrades on tests. Bryan, who has handled every case this year, noted that there were more cases of cheating on tests and assignments and fewer cases of plagiarism than in years past, although faculty members said papers taken from the Internet are still prevalent.
"The Internet is usually involved," said John Board, a professor of electrical and computer engineering who added that he typically reports one or two cases of academic dishonesty per year. This year, Board confronted four or five instances in his Introduction to Computer Architecture course, but he was careful to stress that his recent experience does not suggest a cheating epidemic. "One year does not a trend make," he said.
As some students have used technology to cut corners in their coursework, professors have used similar technology to detect such violations. Board, for example, checks submitted work against a computer archive that not only catalogs his own previous classes' work, but also comparable work that has been submitted at other schools. If the work he has received resembles previously submitted work, Board then looks further for evidence of academic dishonesty.
In the cases of dishonesty that have been detected, both Bryan and Board expressed more regret than anger. Bryan described cheating as an ill-advised shortcut taken by students under stress, and Board called disciplinary proceedings time-consuming and "painful for all involved."
"The resolution of theses cases is fine," Board said. "What I wish would happen is no offenses at all."
Administrators noted that the recent spike in academic integrity violations could be a product of multiple factors.
"Is there more cheating, or are faculty members more attentive?" Bryan asked. "There is no evidence for any conclusion."
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