Abstract:

The present paper starts from the experience of its author while teaching a course in Academic Ethics and Integrity to Master’s Degree University Students this academic year, 2023-2024. They are students in the Engineering in Foreign Languages, who study in the French language. The course was structured as follows: it contains an introduction where the academic culture is presented, with its values, with its relevance to society, and continues with the rights and obligations of students and academic staff, showing students how these relationships should go on. The introductory section makes an attempt to introduce students to the atmosphere of their university, and allows them to notice how academic values such as non-discrimination based on nationality, ethnicity, gender, respect for diversity, multiculturalism, are the same with values promoted at supranational level, e.g. by the European Union. The link between university culture and society will, thus, become clear to them. The course also brings in a practical dimensions, through discussions based on students’ experience based on their university years until now, but also based on exercises to recognize and discuss plagiarism, with situations such as rephrasing, self-plagiarism, academic fraud and dishonest practices for class assignments such as being helped by a friend, and so on. The course also includes situations based on news articles, such as one where a teacher’s solutions to teach his students in highschool about plagiarisim is presented. This teacher creates a Wikipedia entry he creates himself and the result is the assignment he gives to his students is copied from there. Students in Academic Ethics and Integrity are invited to present their opinion about this teacher’s solution and to propose their own solution to the problems. Reasons why students may resort to copying in their assignments is also discussed, as well as more subtle details such as presenting second-hand references, such as the ones presented to works in the bibliography of a scientific article that students read. The structure of a scientific paper and communication are also included in the discussions and information presented in this course, together with examples of citation systems. The course encourages students’ active participation, as they are asked to present and to argue for their opinions related to the topics of the course. Since the course is held online, students also benefit from teaching and learning with technology, as they can have access to video materials and to materials that are shared on the screen of the teacher for discussion.

Keywords:

Active learning, teaching with technology, citation system, self-plagiarism, academic fraud, arguing for or against.