Not much academic poor practice, a lot of academic malpractice

When it's marking time, it is also academic integrity time. And I must say I have been busy! But I noticed that I am busy in a different way from the first semester.

Normally, quite a lot of the cases are just occurrences of bad paraphrasing. Students have, slightly too often, the inclination to take text from the sources they use (mostly peer-reviewed articles), change it a bit, and then put it in their work. What we want them to do, of course, is absorb the knowledge, and then rephrase it entirely in their own words. But admittedly, that is more work. Unfortunately for them, though, it is very easy for a software to pick up on such things. So normally, my academic integrity time often boils down to deciding how much of the text they have ripped out of the sources they used, and how big the penalty is I will give them. And then document all of that.

This time, however, I am predominantly dealing with actual academic malpractice. Two types reared their heads this semester: collusion and fabrication. The students have to produce their own work, and if their work is too similar to that of a peer, we call them in and establish how that happened. If it becomes clear it indeed was a case of one student doing the work and the other one pretty much recycling that, the recycling students doesn't get marks for their work. And normally, the recycled student gets a stern warning. Letting someone else use your work is academic malpractice as well, though, so they are at risk of also not getting any marks. 

Fabrication is when students make up data or references. Generally, the problem is the references. Too many students still haven't realised that if you ask ChatGPT for references, it tends to make stuff up. And these students clearly don't have the habit of actually reading what they cite. And it is very easy to prove that an article doesn't exist. We take that quite seriously. A scientist will always be flawed, but has to be trustworthy. 

I have been dealing with both cases of collusion and fabrication this semester. And I've totted it up; in the first semester, I dealt with seven cases of insufficient paraphrasing, vs five in this one. And in the first semester, I had five cases of academic malpractice, but this semester I have already dealt with eight. And there are still four on my list. And the list could get longer; after all, the marking is not finished. But it looks like this is really the semester of academic malpractice! I have no idea why. I wish it weren't.

I think it won't be long before ChatGPT gives real references. I suppose we then have to mark a bit stricter on whether what the students say these sources reveal is really true. That's more work! And by the time free AI actually can do the literature review for you, we can demand a lot more from the students. It's a bit like when Excel became available. Suddenly one could make the students (like me at the time) do a lot more calculations, and make them a lot more complex. But that is a bigger discussion. For now I'm just a dealing with the large number of students I have to penalise quite severely!