2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Design and Evaluation of an Academic Integrity Module for Computer Science Students

Presented at Computing and Information Technology Division (CIT) Technical Session 2

Academic Integrity (AInt) violations in Computer Science (CS) have been on the rise in recent years, the CS Program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte) being no exception. Students are often unaware of what constitutes a violation and of its potential consequences. To address this, we design a standalone, self-paced, online Academic Integrity course module targeted at CS students. Our module aims to increase student awareness about academic misconduct, inform students about the potential consequences of academic misconduct, and educate students about strategies and resources to avoid academic misconduct, incorporating scenarios and information specifically relevant to CS throughout. In this paper, we present the details of the module and report our experiences and analysis from deploying it in eight courses within the CS program at UNC Charlotte in the Spring and Fall of 2021. Our analysis, based on responses from 314 students, demonstrates the effectiveness of the module in meeting our goals and also sheds light on opportunities for further improvement that we have already capitalized on. We envision that our module can be adopted and adapted by other CS programs and that our experiences can serve as an exemplar for the development of similar program-specific AInt learning modules, all with the overarching goal of mitigating AInt violations.

Authors

Dr. Debarati Basu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6205-8510 Embry Riddle Aeronautical University [biography]

Dr. Debarati Basu is an Assistant Professor in the Engineering Fundamentals Department in the College of Engineering at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University at the Daytona Beach campus. She earned her Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Virginia Tech (VT). She received her bachelor's and masters in Computer Science and Engineering. Her research is at the intersection of Engineering Education (EE) and Computing Education Research (CER) to advance personalized learning, specifically within the context of online learning and engagement, educational technologies, curriculum design which includes innovative and equitable pedagogical approaches, and support programs that boost the academic success of different groups of students. She teaches in active learning environments, such as project-based learning and flipped classrooms. She aims to bring EE and CER into practice.
Prof. Harini Ramaprasad University of North Carolina at Charlotte [biography]

Dr. Harini Ramaprasad is a Teaching Full Professor in the Department of Computer Science at UNC Charlotte. Dr. Ramaprasad received her B.S. degree in Computer Science from Bangalore University and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University. Dr. Ramaprasad's research interests are in the areas of computer science education, real-time systems, computer architecture and cyber-physical systems, with her recent work focusing on improving student learning and engagement in advanced cybersecurity education.

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