Handling Academic Misconduct

Quick Links…

Identification

Identification of Academic Misconduct can be tricky. Firstly, please familiarize yourself with Section 4.2 of the Student Code of Conduct. This, combined with whichever specific policies you’ve outlined in your syllabus, set the boundaries for what will be considered academic misconduct in your course.

One common method of identifying potential academic misconduct is by inspection. A TA or Instructor may be grading assignments and come across that just seem too similar. This is perfectly valid. Remember, our job is only to identify potential cases of misconduct and provide evidence. The College Hearing Officer will investigate and interview the student and make a determination of responsibility. Beyond manual inspection, there are some tools which can make the process of identifying potential misconduct far less onerous…

Programming Assignments - moss

moss is a powerful piece of software written at Stanford for detecting similarity in software. It supports most of the languages we use in our program and can be run from command-line (e.g. on flip by a script) or using one of the GUIs or clients written for it.

It isn’t the most user-friendly piece of software, however. I’ve written a moss usage guide which can help you get set up initially to run it by command-line, and understand the results. After reviewing the results, if you believe there has been a violation of the code of conduct, please check the Reporting section of this page.

Written Assignments - TurnItIn

OSU subscribes to a service called TurnItIn, which is integrated in Canvas. It is useful for detecting plagiarism in written assignments. For help getting started, and for usage, check the eCampus TurnItIn Resource Page.

Reporting

Once you have identified a case where you believe Academic Misconduct has occurred, it is important to submit a report. The Reporting Process is thoroughly detailed at the Faculty Academic Misconduct Page. It is a simple procedure and requires fairly little effort on your part. That being said, here are some important notes and tips…

Filing Tips

  • TAs are allowed to help you pull together supporting evidence.
  • Check any boxes (Plagiarism, Cheating, Assisting, etc) you think may have occurred. The College Hearing Officer will make a final determination.
  • The standard penalty set by the College of Engineering is “Penalty on Assignment” (0 points).
    NOTE: Except in rare, severe cases, a harsher penalty will not be approved.
  • For programming assignments, you should attach all relevant files and/or websites for each submission. It also helps if you clearly note (in a separate document or in a notes field) the sections of the program that the College Hearing Officer should look at when investigating.
  • If you want to make their life even easier, you can (in addition to the original student code) include versions of student-submitted code and their sources with any obfuscating whitespace/indentation variations removed.

Required Reporting Timeline

When academic misconduct reports are submitted late it prevents students from hearing early on in the course that they need to adjust their behavior and it causes undue load on the College at the end of a term. Thus, the general rule is to file cheating reports ASAP. In order to set our standard about what “ASAP” means, here is our official expectation for reporting cheating:

  • If you are going to report academic honesty violations to the College, you must do so within 10 business days of the assignment due date.

Please consider the following recommendations, none of which are required, but which might prove inspirational:

  • Check at least one assignment for cheating per term.
  • Scan for cheating ASAP after assignments are submitted, whenever they come in.
  • Decouple grading from cheating detection; consider having a TA who’s assignment is to scan for cheating and report to you for final determination.
  • Use Gradescope to automate cheating detection (contact Justin Wolford for instructions, though note setting these up takes time).

There are some exceptions to the official standard:

  • Deciding whether or not to check for cheating is up to you.
  • You can file cheating reports for students who have been granted extensions, are using “bonus days”, have Incomplete grades, etc. at anytime, though remember the general rule.
  • Generally speaking, there is no statute of limitation on checking for cheating, though reporting grade changes past one year after the course concludes will be exceptionally difficult. If you discover someone cheated well after the fact, feel free to file a report late.

General Notes

  • A common method of dealing with the grade while the investigation is in progress is make a note in an area it won’t be missed at the end of the term (such as an un-published module page), then email the student (or post an Assignment comment in Canvas) informing them of the process. This may include text such as…
    Your assignment is under review for a potential case of academic misconduct. The College of Engineering Hearing Officer will be in touch soon regarding the incident, and any inquiries should go to them. Your grade will remain unassigned until the case has been reviewed and a determination has been made by the College Hearing Officer. For more information on the process, please check the Academic Misconduct Student Resource Page at https://studentlife.oregonstate.edu/studentconduct/academic-misconduct-students Grade if found Not Responsible: X/Y
  • If it’s time to submit grades and you haven’t received confirmation of Responsibility from the College, we’ve been advised to give students a grade of I/X where X is the letter grade they would receive if they were found responsible (i.e. they did commit academic misconduct).
  • When the college finds the student responsible/not responsible, faculty must go in and change the grade accordingly as soon as possible, but in all cases within one week of notification.
  • Assisting is considered misconduct. This means that if Student A copied Student B with B’s knowledge, both of them should have reports filed. Instructors do not bear the burden of determining who cheated from whom. If this is a concern, include both students and both charges (cheating/assisting or plagiarism/assisting) and the CHO will attempt to sort out the details.
  • The first confirmed case of Academic Misconduct results in counseling and an assignment penalty. Any later cases can result in removal from the University.
  • Because of the above, if you, for whatever reason, are submitting multiple reports on the same student at the same time, the College has asked us to submit only one report and include all violations. This allows the student a chance to take the counseling and correct their actions.