2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Introduction: Universal availability of electronic devices and internet resources has significantly improved students' learning experience. However, challenges associated with dishonest practices, including plagiarism, are increasingly concerning. Software solutions have been developed to assist instructors in identifying plagiarism. For example, one software will compare students' written reports with papers in a database and give a "similarity score", with high scores indicating plagiarism. This study evaluates the influence of cultural and environmental factors on students' academic honesty awareness and their performance in an assignment in terms of their similarity scores. Furthermore, this study aims to identify methods to increase academic integrity awareness and effectively improve students' success rates.

Methods: Data was voluntarily collected and anonymized from 1st-year MS Bioengineering students during the Fall semesters of 2021 and 2022. Information collected included student demographics and academic honesty awareness. We then compared the data with the Turnitin similarity scores obtained for the first assignment of the course. For the first cohort, all students were assigned to write a summary of the same scientific paper published in a peer-reviewed journal. For the second cohort, students were allowed to select their topic of interest. Students then received a lecture on academic awareness and were given the opportunity to repeat the assignment should they want to improve their similarity scores.

Results and Discussion: Survey responses were analyzed to better understand the impact of demographics and honesty awareness on the similarity scores. In the first cohort, 51% were native English speakers, 45% went to college in the US, 85% had a BS in an Engineering discipline, and 92% were pursuing the first semester of graduate studies. For the second cohort, the percentages were significantly different for the demographics of Undergraduate college and English native speakers (27%, 29%, 75%, 94%), likely attributed to the impact of Covid-19 travel bans affecting the 2021 cohort.

Turnitin similarity scores were significantly reduced between the first and second assignments, suggesting an improvement after a lecture on academic integrity policy. For the first assignment, non-native English speakers had a higher similarity score (26.10 ± 19.90%) than native English speakers (10.77 ± 9.55%). Overall, there was a slight but not significant improvement in the similarity scores for students with biological and engineering backgrounds. All similarity scores were improved in their second submission (similarity scores below 15%). The results suggest a positive influence of academic dishonesty awareness education and the importance of giving students opportunities to adapt to a language barrier and new environment in the first semester of their graduate study. We also observed an improvement in the scores when students could choose their own topic, suggesting that engagement can influence dishonest behaviors.

We gave an academic honesty awareness survey in order to better understand students’ perspectives regarding various behaviors and acts associated with academic dishonesty. Our goal was to investigate if and how a student’s perception of plagiarism and awareness influences the similarity scores from Turnitin and how to act in consequence. Our findings hint at the importance of identifying optimized academic techniques that improve students’ experience and performance and the potential for offering students to repeat an assignment after learning about academic honesty. The data from this study also focuses on the international student population, which might be particularly affected due to language barriers, cultural shock, and other stresses in a new environment.

Conclusion: To better understand the reasoning behind plagiarism and how to improve academic integrity education in first-year graduate students, we investigated various demographical factors and experiences of academic honesty awareness and their correlation with the Turnitin similarity score. We found that international students, particularly non-English native speakers, had worse similarity scores in their first assignment than their peers. The worse score is likely due to low awareness of the University's academic integrity policy and language barrier, amongst other stressful factors international students face. It is encouraging that students scored much better on their second attempt after being explained the importance of academic integrity, with the new Turnitin score similar to that of their fellow students who had originally scored well. These results highlight the need for further investigation and a better understanding of factors contributing to plagiarism-related behaviors. As a result, we can find more effective strategies to educate students from diverse backgrounds and give all students equal opportunities to succeed.