BOULDER — The number students at the University of Colorado at Boulder busted for cheating has increased by nearly 40 percent this academic year, but educators say they aren’t alarmed, crediting increased classroom vigilance for the uptick in reports.
Meanwhile, officials are weighing whether they should renew CU’s contract with a company that provides plagiarism-detection software to faculty or save money and rely on the university’s own licensed technology that performs the same task.
Plagiarism makes up most cheating cases at CU.
During the 2009-10 academic year, the CU Honor Code Council recorded 218 cheating episodes, which is the highest in recent years. The violations numbered 157 in 2008-09, 186 in 2007-08 and 171 in 2006-07, said campus spokesman Bronson Hilliard.
“While the numbers are up significantly over last year, so were the communication efforts about being vigilant,” Hilliard said. “The numbers may reflect the fact that we had a more widespread discussion about academic honesty in the classroom this year.”
The Honor Code Council also investigated nine cheating cases in the Graduate School, which is atypical.
John Stevenson, interim dean of the Graduate School, said CU is better communicating to educators that the honor code is not designed just for undergraduates.
“Over the last few years, I’ve worked for there to be a closer connection between the Graduate School and the honor code,” he said.
Joseph Rosse, chairman of the Boulder Faculty Assembly, said honor-code violations are a concern to faculty members. The assembly hasn’t analyzed why there might be an increase, but Rosse suspects that faculty members have become better at detecting dishonesty.
The news comes as the university negotiates renewal subscription rates with , which scans student essays and flags them if they contain passages that are exact or close matches to other written works.
CU paid $5,050 for its initial subscription to when it used the program on a pilot basis in 2002-03. Subscription rates have increased over the years and have reached $28,000 annually. The current contract ends June 15.
The university owns a technology called Safe Assign that is just as effective, Hilliard said. The plagiarism-detection tool compares student papers with postings on the Internet, a database of scholarly articles and other sources.
“This system, by technical accounts, is just as good as ,” Hilliard said. “We’re feeling good about our own proprietary system.”
The only downside, Hilliard said, is that switching to the CU-owned system likely would require some training.
“There are no plans whatsoever to scrap having a digital search system for our faculty,” he said. “We will absolutely have one. It will be a tool in our arsenal to cut down on academic dishonesty.”
Brittany Anas: 303-473-1132 or anasb@dailycamera.com
