It’s Culture, Not Morality

In a soon to be published book entitled My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture, Susan D. Blum talks about how current students think and act about originality and ethics. She posits that two cultures exist today in the classroom, ours and theirs. Studies have shown that over 75% of students admit to having cheated and 68% say that they have cut and pasted material from the Internet without citing the source.

We all can probably think of many reasons that we could give for students using any means to get a good grade. From a post reporting on the book on the February 3 Inside Higher Ed Page, Blum suggest that the real problem of academic dishonesty comes from a lack of communication between the two cultures she describes. The Inside Higher Ed report states that she believes that most universities use a "shock and awe approach" to combating plagiarism and that it is not working. Blum believes that we should adapt a "hearts and minds strategy" to help us understand why students do what they do, why what we do does not work and why we should even care.

When the book is published, it sounds like something that we should read and could help to open a dialogue between us and our students. But until then, read the article on Inside Higher Ed, and let others know what you think. Is what we are doing unproductive? Is it appropriate? What role do we have in the promotion of academic integrity? Is this part of helping student pharmacists to become professionals? What other approaches, if any, should we take? I look forward to your thoughts.