Collegiate Professor, Transformational Leadership and Project Management, School of Business, University of Maryland Global Campus | joseph.dmello@umgc.edu

     This paper started out as an attempt to broach the hypothesis that stronger student engagement and student-faculty relationships are likely to result in higher levels of student academic integrity, in the hope that further research will be undertaken to either validate or overturn that hypothesis. The aim was to raise awareness and spur action to make the quest for academic integrity more root-cause-driven: focusing less on policing and enforcement, and more on student relationships and engagement.

     While pondering and exploring this hypothesis I was inexorably drawn to examining the various dimensions of student engagement itself: what does it mean; how is it assured and measured and by whom (students, faculty, administrators, etc.); how does it relate to course content and quality; what is the role of faculty; how can technology be creatively leveraged, etc.? And, given these numerous dimensions, I reflected deeply on the implications that enhanced student engagement could have, not only for academic integrity, but for higher education itself.

     The roots of my interest in both student engagement and academic integrity predate the COVID-19 pandemic and my full-time association with the University of Maryland system, but the pandemic heightened my engagement with students because I needed to be more aware of and responsive to their needs, challenges, physical and psychological well being, and extenuating circumstances. I observed that this heightened engagement and awareness opened a vivid portal into the student experience that led to thought-provoking questions and realizations.

     For example, my increased engagement and communication during the pandemic seemed to engender greater student interest in learning and practical applications, which in turn made them more motivated to tackle and complete challenging assignments on their own or with minimal assistance from me, rather than seeking simple and mechanical exercises, taking shortcuts, or looking for canned solutions elsewhere. I felt compelled to ask myself the obvious but long overdue question: Why do students really cheat on assignments? Could at least a part of the reason be that they do not adequately understand the course material and/or the assignments, or that they are not sufficiently motivated because they do not fully appreciate the practical value of the assignments; or that there is a shortfall in the level of student and/or faculty engagement?

     The more I mulled over these questions and the longer the pandemic dragged on, I realized that all my questions germinated from one overarching fundamental question: Are we (faculty and administrators) really listening to our students? This realization resulted in framing this paper around the theme of listening, literally but more so figuratively.

Are We Truly Listening?

     I would posit that the COVID-19 pandemic has made us academics better listeners, maybe even forced us to become better listeners. Our academic profession is heavily skewed to one-way communication with students that places emphasis on didactics, lecturing, instructing, and grading – and the art of listening is usually not a top-of-mind priority. I dare say that “listening” in academics is sometimes no more than monitoring students’ performance on assignments and activities. Communicating with students can often devolve into providing brief feedback on that performance. Often, this feedback is just enough to support the assigned score or grade.

     Various models have been developed to capture the progression of listening levels (e.g., D’Mello, 2021; Kimsey-House, Kimsey-House, Sahdahl, & Whitworth, 2011; Scharmer, 2016). At the lowest level is listening to the audio (or our filtered version of the audio), with subsequent levels progressing toward incorporating body language, emotions, situation and context, and ultimately, the overall psyche–the pinnacle of the listening continuum where the communicator is so attuned to the mental, emotional, and psychological context of the listener that words and actions are interpreted against the backdrop of this richer context. The pandemic has compelled us to interpret and exercise time-cherished rules, assumptions, policies, beliefs, and standards in the context of students’ individual circumstances and challenges, whether physical, emotional, intellectual, or psychological. We have thus been forced to climb the ladder of listening and evolve from passive listening (or interpreting and observing) to the realm of active listening (perceiving, feeling, and empathizing).

     So, what does listening have to do with student engagement and academic integrity? If we are actively listening to students, we should know why they cheat. Well, I did a quick search of the literature to attempt to understand why academics believe that students cheat. As I suspected, most of the literature approached the topic from the viewpoint that culpability for cheating rested squarely on students. Let’s look at the commonly cited reasons or beliefs for students engaging in cheating:

• Student-related characteristics: laziness, lack of motivation, talent, or ability
• Time challenges
• Rivalry: because classmates cheat, I may get a lower grade if I don’t cheat
• Procrastination, which results in finding the quickest way to submit an assignment
• Students don’t really care about learning but just want the degree or credential

     In my humble opinion, these assessments of why students cheat do not gravitate to root causes, and they reek of several well-known biases, minimally confirmation bias and correspondence bias (the latter being the tendency to draw inferences about dispositions from behaviors that can be entirely explained by situational context). None of these reasons even consider that we academics might share some culpability for academic integrity lapses by creating conditions and situations that might drive some students to cheating. Could there be another missing part of the puzzle: Do we make learning efficient, convenient, and engaging so that students may be less inclined to cheat?

     I posed the above question about this missing part of the puzzle during my Lightning Talk at the University System of Maryland Kirwin Center Fall Faculty Showcase on September 30, 2021. I was pleasantly surprised and gratified when about two months later, on December 5, 2021, Harvard Business Publishing featured an article, “Are Your Assessments Helping Students Learn? How to Boost Retention and Discourage Cheating by Approaching Testing as a Learning Tool” (Raynak & Tkacs, 2021). The article  lent credence to my hypothesized link between academic integrity and student engagement. Here are three direct quotes from that article:

“Educators can reduce students’ inclination to cheat in the first place by better engaging them in class and giving students more opportunities to showcase their knowledge” (para. 10).

“Because learning is a process, educators must explore strategies for evaluating learning that actually help students master the content—not just regurgitate it” (para. 2).

“By teaching in the way that allows the brain to best assimilate new knowledge, we give our students a better chance at becoming successful lifelong learners” (para. 7).

     Turning the spotlight away from our students, let’s take a good hard look at ourselves in the mirror. Could there be other root causes for students cheating that implicate us, a few of which might be:

• The classroom content is outdated or disorganized or does not lend itself to easy assimilation and understanding
• There are inconsistencies, redundancies, gaps, inaccuracies, etc. in the content
• Concepts are not explained clearly, and the students are expected to connect the dots between disjointed readings, references, assignments, etc.
• Assignments require knowledge and skills that do not have a clear link to learning materials
• Practical implications of the readings and assignments are unclear (so students see no value in expending effort to complete them)
• The professor is not adequately engaged in facilitating and/or simplifying learning
• A survival of the fittest attitude prevails vs. a no student left behind ethic

How and Why Should We Enhance Our Listening?

     To practice better listening, we would do well to borrow a leaf from the book of our counterparts in industry. In product development, paramount importance and focus are placed on the user experience: How do we make a product simple and intuitive to use? We academics sometimes conflate making learning simple with dumbing things down or with making learning simplistic. This does not have to be the case. In fact, a very prominent academic, none other than Albert Einstein, was the one who said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

     While it is probably true that Einstein might not have been able to explain his general theory of relativity to a high schooler, he was likely implying that he could explain it simply to someone who had adequate prerequisite knowledge. In academia, we do have prerequisites for our courses, so why can’t we make every course simple for whoever has the prerequisites? And judging whether a course is simple or not should be done by students and academics (not academics alone!). Simplicity does not necessarily imply that learning is quick or effortless, but that learning is broken down into logically connected components, each of which is simple, clearly explained, and appropriately contextualized; and that these components collectively build up to a conceptual or practical crescendo that generates some aha moments and deep realizations and insights.

     We often deviate from simplicity because, unlike our industrial counterparts, we do not design our product in a user-centric (meaning student-centric) manner. We do focus on numerous other very legitimate centricities: Knowledge-centric, critical thinking-centric, Bloom taxonomy-centric, skill-centric, competency-centric, objective-centric, Quality Matters-centric, etc. While these centricities are absolutely essential, they will not fully bloom in a soil that is not fertilized with a strong student-centric focus. And while instructional design does bring a degree of user-centric focus to course design, it only focuses on a small part of the total user/student experience. The instructional designer is not involved in the complete student learning experience (assimilating course material, critical thinking, completing and submitting assignments, taking exams, etc.).

     I intend to evolve this paper into one that includes a full-fledged student-centric learning and course development model that identifies and leverages various aspects of student engagement; draws from best practices in industrial product development and instructional design and quality; promotes value-focused and agile course/program development; and is responsive to the requirements of external stakeholders (employers, industries, professional certification bodies, etc.). I believe that this model is long overdue and vitally essential not only for providing students with the learning experience that they rightfully deserve but also because its absence poses an existential threat to our academic institutions.

     It is widely acknowledged (even in academic circles) that our academic institutions do not adequately prepare students for employability. The May 2021 issue of the Harvard Business Review included an article, “The U.S. Education System Isn’t Giving Students What Employers Need” (Hansen, 2021). The author, the CEO of Cengage, draws attention to the fact that the growing gap between the skills employers need and the skills (or lack thereof) that academic institutions are cultivating is prompting several companies to develop their own educational offerings. Here are some direct quotes from that article:

     “Some organizations are taking their own approach to providing valuable alternate education options. For example, IBM created their Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) to help students gain employable digital skills, while Google recently announced new certificate programs and job search experiences aimed at finding roles that match candidates’ experience and education” (para. 10).

     “There’s a direct disconnect between education and employability, where employers view universities and colleges as the gatekeepers of workforce talent, yet those same institutions aren’t prioritizing job skills and career readiness. This not only hurts employers, but also sets the average American worker up for failure before they’ve even begun their career, as new employees who have been hired based on their four-year educational background often lack the actual skills needed to perform in their role” (para. 7).

     “Since the beginning of the pandemic, job postings for entry-level positions that require a bachelor’s degree fell by 45% — pointing to the fact that employers simply want candidates who have more skills and experience in the real world” (para. 6).

     If we do not acknowledge these facts and self-correct, many of our academic institutions may go the way of the dodo. I have spent sixteen years in industry, been in the teaching and training profession for many years, have conducted in-house training and consulting for companies, and have taught at several universities. I can honestly state that most of the academics I know would admit to the less-than-ideal state of classroom content and quality, and would acknowledge that students face many challenges as a result. Here are some honest questions we can ask ourselves to consider being and practicing the change that we want to see in our students:

• Do we know a course or classroom in disrepair?
• Can we recall a time when we turned around student performance with a little extra concern and engagement?
• Are we open to admitting that our own behaviors, practices, attitudes, and processes (and maybe even our occasional apathy, egos, or hubris) create conditions that may drive students to cheat or may result in their performing well below their full potential?
• Why don’t we do alpha and beta testing on our courses, so we incorporate the end user (student) perspective, as happens with most commercial products?
• Finally, are we truly listening? To our students, to their employers, to the industries and professions that we claim to prepare them for, and, most importantly, to our own consciences and our deepest sense of what is ethical, fair, just, and right?

     The lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic would be lost on us if we do not continue to engage in active listening to our students, appreciate their lives and context, be mindful of their many challenges and future needs, and truly seek to design learning and assessment to engage them and fully prepare them for their future professions. We need to keep running with the listening baton that the pandemic has forcefully thrust into our fists, so we can sprint forward and gain momentum on the listening journey long after the pandemic has become a distant memory. It is my sincere hope that the student-centric learning and course development model referred to above will add one small stride to that sprint and hopefully compel students to engage more and disfavor breaching academic integrity.

References

D’Mello, J. (2021, July). Enhancing value with agile practices. Course lecture delivered at the University of Chicago.

Hansen, M. (2021, May 18). The U.S. education system isn’t giving students what employers need. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved April 7, 2022 from https://hbr.org/2021/05/the-u-s-education-system-isnt-giving-students-what-employers-need

Kimsey-House, H., Kimsey-House, K., Sandahl, P., & Whitworth, L. (2011). Co-active coaching: Changing business, transforming lives. 3rd. ed. Nicholas Brealey Publications.

Raynak, C. D., & Tkacs, C. F. (2021, Dec. 6). Are your assessments helping students learn? How to boost retention and discourage cheating by approaching testing as a learning tool. Harvard Business Publishing. Retrieved April 7, 2022 from https://hbsp.harvard.edu/inspiring-minds/are-your-assessments-helping-students-learn

Scharmer, C. O. (2016). Theory U: Leading from the future as it emerges. Berrett Koehler Publishers, Inc.