Matthew Cavalli, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of North Dakota
I have come across examples of cheating in several of my courses at UND (freshmen through graduate students). The infractions ranged from copying homework solutions to plagiarizing text from references. I generally take the approach of immediately assigning all involved a ‘0’ and cc’ing the Department Chair on an email to the students expressing my disappointment and reminding them about the unacceptability of academic dishonesty. The student responses have generally been sheepish acceptance of the consequences by all involved or a visit from one very contrite member of the pair explaining how they copied the other member’s work without their knowledge. In the latter case, I will generally give the unknowing partner’s points back. Initially, I didn’t have anything explicitly stated in my syllabus regarding academic dishonesty. I started putting in a short statement about a year ago and discussing what might constitute academic dishonesty during the first class period. It seems to have reduced the occurrences of cheating. Or else the students have learned to be more skillful in hiding them…
