This dissertation is a longitudinal (four year) applied research investigation of academic integrity at Ohio University that begins shortly before allegations of plagiarized masters' theses became widely publicized and chronicles our efforts across the university to curb academic dishonesty and develop a culture of academic integrity. This project utilized surveys, focus groups, interviews, archival evidence, and ethnographic experience from my time spent working with the Russ College as the Academic Integrity Advisor and on the OU Academic Integrity Committee.
Drawing on the work of dialogic, pragmatic, and critical theorists, my primary concern through this project was to understand how academic integrity (and deviations from it) are communicatively constructed and enacted. The findings of this study are organized around a series of practical and theoretical research questions.
The findings show that academic dishonesty is thought of as being comprised of four dimensions or types: Academic Misconduct, Copying Sentences, Library Misconduct, and Collaboration. There are significant differences among undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty in the perceived seriousness each types of academic dishonesty and changes in perceived seriousness over time. Qualitatively-derived understandings showed differences in the way that academic integrity is defined and that academic integrity is conceptualized much more complexly than described in previous research. Self-reported engagement in academic dishonesty dropped sharply during the second year, but subsequently increased.
While situational factors seem to contribute most directly to decisions to engage in academic dishonesty, classroom and institutional factors influence situational contexts. Situational factors include time pressure, cost-benefit analysis, and knowledge. Classroom factors include course size, perceived course relevance, course difficulty, assignment type, and perceived instructor caring. Institutional factors include institutional priorities, resources, stories with in the institution, and culture.
I conclude by arguing that students, faculty, and academic institutions have a shared responsibility to enact academic integrity, which should begin with a pursuit of learning and development. Academic integrity is a socially constructed, evolving construct and that the ways that we define and enact academic integrity have ethical and practical consequences, particularly with regard to the potential collective intellectual capital that society will have to solve real problems.