The 36% problem

Student learning assessments—from the institutional level to Academically Adrift—routinely overlook the ways that plagiarism and cheating may contribute to poor outcome performance. The blind spot is a curious one. Faculty have long warned students that they must complete work honestly if they are to learn. Cognitive research offers good reasons for such warnings: Students are unlikely to improve at skills or retain content unless they think their way through the work. Yet assessors speculating about below-expectation student performance rarely consider the role of academic integrity, and few surveys on teaching effectiveness inquire into integrity policies. Drawing on cognitive and behavioral research, this paper makes a case for giving academic integrity variables more attention in assessments and studies.