HOW TO CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT THAT ENCOURAGES ACADEMIC INTEGRITY? A TECHNOLOGICAL APPROACH

Levon R. Hayrapetyan
Houston Baptist University

ABSTRACT

Unfortunately, plagiarism is widespread on university campuses across the Nation. The advances in information technology provided various sophisticated tools to discover plagiarism. Although there are many commercially available tools for detecting plagiarism, policing alone is not a comprehensive solution. People should strive to change the overall culture on university campuses in such a way that it discourages academic dishonesty. The author of this study presents a tool (called Test Guard (Excel)) designed for Excel-based assessments. The tool has two main features. First, it tries to prevent students from the temptation of cheating by using a variety of techniques (e.g., closing various types of files, making the Internet temporary inaccessible, etc.). Second, it collects detailed information on students’ activities during the test period. The instructor only can dismiss or confirm that the test was plagiarized. This information is password-protected.

Keywords: Academic integrity, academic dishonesty, cheating, plagiarism, computerized assessment