Students and faculty will soon have the opportunity to voice their opinions on the state of academic integrity and academic dishonesty at Mississippi State University.
Administrators will send out a survey, which should take about 10 minutes to complete, probably late this week or early next week.
The survey will examine attitudes and beliefs about academic integrity and academic dishonesty, vice president for student affairs Bill Kibler said. People will take the survey on an anonymous basis, he said.
A committee made up of equal numbers of students, faculty members and staff members will use the results to evaluate the effectiveness of academic integrity and academic dishonesty policies at Mississippi State University to determine what, if any, changes need to be made, Kibler said.
Academic integrity is what the name implies, Kibler said: “Having integrity in the academic process in everything they do from beginning to end.”
Academic dishonesty, which is also known as academic misbehavior, is the absence ointegrity, honesty and trust, he said.
When an institution fails to properly promote academic integrity and address academic dishonesty, its degrees are devalued, he said.
A separate survey will be given to students and faculty, but the topics covered will be the same, he said.
“They are parallel but not identical,” he said.
The survey has a target of 500 students and 200 faculty members. It is open only to those who receive a link in an e-mail. E-mails to students will be from Kibler and Student Association President Jon David Cole, while e-mails to faculty will be from provost Peter Rabideau.
Kibler urges those who receive the e-mail to take the survey because it’s not being used for somebody’s private research but to benefit the university. Although other surveys are important, too, he said, “There aren’t very many more surveys you could take.”
The survey will ask students the frequency with which they have engaged in or seen other engage in a list of 25 different behaviors that would be considered academic dishonesty, Kibler said. The list ranges from looking at somebody else’s paper during a test to using electronic means to cheat during tests to plagiarism, he said.
It will also ask how serious students consider various forms of academic dishonesty, he said.
“The faculty then are asked similar questions about whether they have ever been aware of these types of infractions,” as well as how serious they feel the infractions are and how they deal with them, Kibler said.
“Plus, there are places on the survey for students and faculty to provide comments,” he said.
Professor of agriculture economics Albert J. “Chico” Allen, who has taught at MSU since 1977, said he has not observed cheating in his classes.
“I think most of them know the rules about cheating and dishonesty,” he said.
The timing of the survey during allegations that an MSU faculty member committed plagiarism are entirely coincidental, Kibler said. He said the survey covers academic integrity in dishonesty on the part of students, not faculty members, but academic integrity is also important for faculty.