Posted on July 21: Honesty is the best policy

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Thyret_Kidd_opt.jpg” caption=”Andrea Thyret-Kidd”]There is something rewarding about submitting a paper that is your own. Spending hours on the computer, deleting words that don't fit, adding paragraphs with more pizzazz. Putting sweat and tears into an assignment worth 20 per cent of the final grade.

But what about the student that logs into a paper mill, searches through a database containing thousands of papers, and paying $50 for something they have no knowledge about?

Both may get the same mark, but the satisfaction they feel will be poles apart. Indeed, integrity is worth more than the grade itself, feels Andrea Thyret-Kidd, McMaster's new academic integrity officer.

Thyret-Kidd was hired last fall to implement the University's new Academic Integrity Code, which took effect May 1, with a transition between the old and new policy until September.

The code, which replaces the Academic Dishonesty Policy, is intended to change people's attitudes from dishonesty to valuing integrity, she says. “It's not just about the negative side but it's about the positive side too. Part of the reason we're doing this is to protect the integrity of the entire campus and the integrity of those students who didn't cheat.”

Obviously, cheating is not new, she says. “It's been around for decades, probably centuries.”

In fact, when people find out what Thyret-Kidd does for a living, they usually have a story to tell her. They may vary a little depending on their age, but the gist of it is usually the same. They know, have heard of, or they themselves have committed an act of academic dishonesty at least once in their lives.

“It is fascinating to me that when in my personal life I tell people what I do, they all have stories to tell about times they were tempted to cheat or about the person they knew in their program who cheated. It's not a new thing and you can talk to people who are 50 years old who are reflecting back on what happened when they were in school,” she says. “I remember the girl in my residence floor who would sit in the lounge and type out essays for people and make some money doing it.”

Thyret-Kidd was hired at McMaster as the residence life manager in 1991. In 2001, prior to accepting her new position, she worked in Student Affairs, where she assisted with first-year transition issues.

In her new position, she wants to educate people about academic dishonesty and look at preventative ways of stopping cheating before it begins. She adds that all plagiarism cases will now come to her office, instead of being dealt with individually by the faculty or department. She has a number of projects on the go, including the creation of a new logo, Web site, pamphlets, tabletop brochures and training manuals for adjudicators.

Stamping out plagiarism at McMaster is not going to be an easy ride, she admits, pointing her finger at the internet and paper mills. “The internet is very much a part of lives now and students have grown up with computers. That's a big difference compared to someone like myself, when computers were just coming in at the end of my university career,” she says.

“Things that are on the internet now didn't exist 10 years ago. Where some people would have gone to the library for something, today they just jump on the internet. Things have just changed with technology and I think it has taken everyone a little bit by surprise.”

Paper mills have also made it easier for students to cheat, she says. “Now, you can go onto the internet and pop into a paper mill and some of them are quite astounding. I started looking at a paper mill one day and they had more than 1,400 papers available in the area of history alone, and they had it subcategorized. You get an abstract, how many pages it is and then there's a value and you just pay it on a credit card and they send the paper to you.” She adds that since she looked at this paper mill last fall, more than 100 papers in history had been added to the database. “And that's just one paper mill,” she says.

But technology is also making it easier to catch cheaters, she adds. McMaster has adopted on a trial basis the use of Turnitin.com, a Web program that works to deter students from cheating. Professors who use Turnitin.com in their class, ask students to submit a hard copy to them and an electronic copy to the program. The program runs papers against everything on the internet in a 24-hour period and it comes back with a report. The faculty member reviews the report and decides whether it is plagiarism and if so, how they are going to address it. A decision is pending on whether the University will buy an institutional membership to Turnitin.com.

“The biggest thing this does for the University, in my opinion, is that you start to put literature out there that says we're going to ask you to submit your papers electronically and we'll be running it through a program to check these things. So it's a deterrent. It's not so much about catching students as it is on preventing them from cheating in the first place,” Thyret-Kidd says.

While cases of plagiarism doubled last year at McMaster, Thyret-Kidd has not lost faith in students. In fact, it is often students who come to her with concerns about their cheating peers. “When I speak to students about this they are quite concerned. When you take a look at people who are blowing the whistle, it's other students. It's so unfair if you're an honest student and you're aware that other students are cheating.”