January 16, 2024 • 40 mins
Episode 146 of The A&P Professor podcast is one of our winter shorts, where I replay interesting segments from previous episodes. In this one, we discuss the importance of academic integrity in the Anatomy & Physiology course. We emphasize the need to incorporate discussions about integrity in the syllabus and course materials and share real-life examples of violations in the healthcare field. We highlight how dishonesty can have serious consequences and discuss strategies for prevention, such as using multiple test versions and unique topics for papers/projects. Providing examples of acceptable practices and discouraging unethical behavior foster a culture of integrity. We invite listeners to contribute their own strategies for promoting academic integrity.
00:00 | Introduction
01:07 | Academic Integrity in Anatomy & Physiology
29:39 | Modeling Professional Integrity
38:34 | Staying Connected
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Guess what? this is one of our winter shorts! Yep, that's right, it's a shorter-than-usual episode in which I present one or two, or maybe three or four, classic, evergreen segments from previous episodes that are remastered, reconstituted, and recycled for your listening and learning pleasure. But mainly it's to give me a break for self-care over the holiday season. We'll be back to our regular programming in late January.
Academic Integrity in Anatomy & Physiology
28.5 minutes
One way to approach “the cheating issue” in our courses is to promote a culture of academic honesty from the start. But how do we do that? Kevin shares some practical tips you can use for a comprehensive approach to creating and maintaining a culture of professional and academic integrity in your A&P courses (or any courses, really). This segment was first heard in Episode 25.
★ Promoting Academic Integrity in Our Course | Episode 25 (the original broadcast of this segment)
★ What the Best College Teachers Do (the Ken Bain book mentioned in this episode) geni.us/8AoG9QY
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Guess what? This is one of our winter shorts.
Yep, that's right. It's a shorter than usual episode in which I present one
or two or maybe three or four classic evergreen segments from previous episodes
that is remastered, reconstituted,
and recycled for your listening and learning pleasure.
(00:23):
But mainly it's to give me a break for self-care over the holiday season.
We'll be back to our regular programming in late January.
Welcome to the A&P Professor, a few minutes to focus on teaching human anatomy
and physiology with a veteran educator and teaching mentor, your host, Kevin Patton.
(00:43):
Music.
In this Winter Shorts episode, I discuss academic integrity in the the Anatomy and Physiology course.
(01:06):
I want to spend a few minutes talking about academic integrity or academic honesty.
Now, this is something I mentioned briefly in a previous episode,
and I promised I'd get back to it.
Well, so here we are. Kevin Patton Since our students are likely in an A&P course
because they're in training for a profession and are being held to professional
(01:30):
norms in their practicum and clinical courses,
then academic integrity is really a matter of, well, professional integrity.
Maybe that's where we should start. In Ken Bain's book,
What the Best College Teachers Do, which is one of my favorite books books on
teaching, he interviews a whole bunch of master teachers,
(01:53):
people who are really well-respected and well-regarded by their peers and by
their students to find out, well, what makes a really great college teacher.
One of the things I got out of the book is that all of those master teachers,
they focus more on promoting a culture of integrity than they do on focusing
(02:15):
solely on prevention and and enforcement of rules regarding cheating and academic honesty.
So, the question is, how do we do that?
What are some practical ways we can promote a culture of integrity?
Well, one of the things, I believe, is to talk about it. Bring it up.
(02:39):
Now, the first place we can bring it up is in the syllabus.
In episode 24 of this podcast, the syllabus episode, I mentioned this and I
gave a link to a brief online article that I linked to from my own syllabus.
And I'll include that link again in the show notes and episode page for this episode.
But you can put that into your own brief words.
(03:02):
And you can do that in a way that is both professional and supportive rather
than, oh, maybe our knee-jerk response of being condescending and rule-making.
You may remember from the syllabus episode, episode 24, that my colleague Frank
O'Neill's concern in his syllabus is that by listing all the consequences of
(03:27):
wrong action, he's wondering if students get the wrong idea about him.
That really, he's a very supportive and compassionate teacher,
but that might not come through when when our syllabus is not really cast in that light.
So maybe we can reflect on how we address academic integrity in our syllabus
(03:47):
and in our other course materials using our Frank O'Neill filter as we do that to try and hear,
what we're stating through the ears of a student, a student who's just meeting us for the first time.
I have a snippet from my own syllabus in the show notes and episode page,
and it's not It's not perfect by any means, but it might spark some ideas for
(04:11):
putting it into your own words.
So besides the syllabus and other course documents, I think we should also talk
about it in the classroom.
Talk about it face to face with students.
As I mentioned earlier, consider framing it as part of their training as future
professionals in their careers.
(04:31):
Many of our A&P students are going into health professions and other fields
where integrity is not only taken very seriously, it can also be a matter of life and death.
When I do this with my students, I usually tell them about how my wife,
who is a nurse, and I always look at the state nursing newsletter when it comes in the mail.
(04:55):
And we do that because we want to see if we know anybody who's listed in the
section that It lists all the people who have been censured or lost their license
or had other professional integrity issues.
And as I look through those violations, a lot of them are violations that I
think a lot of folks would look at them and think, oh, those are kind of little violations.
(05:18):
Why are they getting hammered so hard for them?
But they're not really. They're not little. Things like not recording when meds
were given to a patient or misreporting the number of pills that were removed from the dispensary.
How many students feel like what they're doing when they cheat in class is just
(05:40):
a little thing and it doesn't really matter.
But there are serious life-altering consequences in the professional setting, aren't there?
Professional censure, loss of their professional license, meaning they can't practice anymore.
They might become target of a lawsuit. There might be criminal punishments involved.
(06:04):
And besides that, you're an A&P teacher and a lot of people who know you are
going to see it posted in the media.
And that kind of leads into a brief discussion of how integrity gets lost in the first place.
There's a lot of research that shows that dishonesty starts small and then slowly
(06:25):
gets bigger, sometimes quickly gets bigger, but it always starts small.
We get into the habit of it and soon we lose sight of the fact that what we're
doing isn't acceptable and that it really does have consequences.
And we lose sight of our own internal slide down that ethical road,
(06:46):
A road that is not going to serve us well and it's not going to serve others well.
We need to ask, do we really want to be unethical as health care providers?
Is that the direction we want to go in?
And on the flip side of that is, do we want unethical health care providers
treating us or our family and friends or handling our patient records?
(07:12):
This is usually the point where I, one of many points where I bring up that
recurring nightmare that all
A&P teachers have, and don't tell me that this has not occurred to you.
You know, having a dream where we wake up from unconsciousness as we're wheeled
into an emergency department,
or maybe we're in an ambulance and we wake up from unconsciousness and we look
(07:36):
up and we see the smiling face of a former A&P student.
And now here's where it can change a bit from from one night to another when
we have this dream, it's not always the same former student.
Sometimes it's that student who you caught cheating and they never change their
ways and they're unethical.
(07:58):
And we can imagine they're going to take shortcuts with our care.
They might steal our medicine or they might write down lies in the patient records
that that they're giving us therapies that they're not really giving or they're
writing down the wrong vital signs and so on because they're not even taking them.
(08:19):
And then in the dream, that's when you realize that your voice can't be heard.
Maybe you have an oxygen mask on and you're having trouble getting through and
you're screaming and yelling, no, no, no.
At that point is when you realize that you're restrained on the gurney and you
can't move either. either.
And so, you're panicking that this person who is dishonest is the one who's
(08:43):
in charge of care at a point when your life is in the balance, and then you wake up.
And then sometime later, you're going to have that dream again, so phew.
Let's get back on track here from that dream state and onto the right track,
the track of developing honesty and integrity and off the track of making a
(09:10):
habit of dishonesty and unethical behavior,
that is, unprofessional behavior.
Another way to promote integrity, besides having those conversations, is prevention.
Don't give opportunities for cheating if you don't have to.
And I know y'all probably have a whole mess of strategies that you're using
(09:32):
right now for prevention.
Hey, why not call into the podcast hotline at 1-833-546-6336.
That's 1-833-LION-DUN. And briefly tell us about it.
Really, your phone is right there. I know it is. You have it handy.
(09:55):
And when this segment is over, just hit pause, call in, and then hit play again.
Here are a few preventative measures that I recommend just to get us all thinking.
One is use several versions of each test that you give in class.
Now this is really easy with online tests.
(10:15):
But these days, it really isn't that hard to do it for paper tests as well.
There's all kinds of test editing software out there, like Respondus,
which I've mentioned before, and others that let you randomize tests easily.
It's just a press of a button, a few keystrokes, and you have several different
versions where the items are randomized.
(10:35):
You may also have the option of randomizing choices within multiple choice items
and matching items, and other items where there are different choices given.
So that can produce different versions of the same test.
And think about starting to build up your own test bank.
And that allows you to give some test items in one year, and then the next year,
(11:01):
take some of those test items and put them, well, like in a fallow field,
let them just sit there for a year or two while you introduce new items.
And so you're always rotating in items in and out, in and out,
so that the tests become different from year to year.
And add a few new ones every year. Take the old items and change them up so
(11:22):
that they're alternate versions of those old items.
Now you have more items to choose from and they're still asking the same kind of information.
They're still testing the same student outcomes.
And try to think up some completely new items. And so if you do that just a
little bit, every time you have a test, just add a few new items,
(11:43):
a few new items, before you know it, you've got 30 years of items built up.
At least that's what happened to me. I got this huge test bank now.
And it really wasn't much effort because it accumulates over time.
So when I give a face-to-face test, I always have three or four versions.
So I hand those out in class and they look identical from a few feet away. way.
(12:07):
For a student, there's a huge risk when they try to copy somebody's answer because
they're not really sure whether that student that they're looking at,
looking at their answer sheet.
They don't know whether it's really the same test or not.
And even if they can see the item they're looking at, it may look similar,
(12:27):
but maybe a little bit different on that other student's test.
And you can do something sort of like that for term papers, various projects
like case studies and other things like that.
And that is have multiple versions and swap them out from year to year or semester to to semester,
swap out the topics that you give, give different groups different topics to
(12:50):
work on, different case studies maybe, or different term paper topics,
and then pick case studies and term paper topics, assignment topics that are unique.
You know, do a little crafting in there and try to make them things that they're
not going to be able to easily look up online and,
you know, buy a term paper that's already written written, or find a case study
(13:15):
that's already out there somewhere, or at least not the answers to the case study.
So there are some things that you can do to prevent cheating.
And then this one, this one's really huge I think. This one,
if you don't do anything else, at least do this.
Give them examples.
I think that many students don't know what cheating is.
(13:38):
Really. I know it's hard to believe, but I'm convinced of it.
In fact, you are probably cheating right now in your teaching and either don't
know that what you're doing is wrong,
or if you are aware of it, you've pushed that awareness down deeper than your
(14:00):
conscious level of awareness.
Awareness, and I'll prove that to you in just a minute.
But getting back to our students, a good example would be plagiarism.
In my experience, a lot of students don't really know what plagiarism is,
at least they don't know all the varieties of plagiarism.
(14:21):
They might know how to do those different varieties of plagiarism,
but they don't necessarily know that what they're doing is wrong and that it is a form of plagiarism.
I think plagiarism just isn't fully understood by a lot of people.
So how do we fix that? We give examples. Give examples of what acceptable research
(14:43):
and paraphrasing and quoting are,
but then also give examples of things that are not acceptable and explain things
that, well, like hiring a person to do your work is not legitimate.
Buying a term paper online is not legitimate.
And why is it not legitimate? Because those are the rules of the assignment.
(15:05):
Those are the rules of the course. That's why it's not legitimate.
You were told not to do that.
But if all you say is don't plagiarize, they're not necessarily going to know
that they're breaking the rules.
They need to know where those lines are because, well, I think that a lot of
us assume that they come into our course knowing that already.
Already, and in my experience, many of them don't.
(15:28):
And these could even be some of your best and brightest students who just are
not aware of some of those kinds of plagiarism and that it's wrong.
Another example that you could give would be logging in attendance for students who aren't there.
A lot of students don't realize that's not acceptable and that that in fact
is dishonest. It's cheating.
(15:50):
Or another example would be getting help that they're not supposed to get.
Now, I give a lot of online tests and they're all open book and I encourage
my students to consult with one another, consult with anybody they want,
do some research online to get the right answer.
And when you have a test that's as open as that, I think a lot of students get
(16:11):
the idea that anything goes, that there's no dishonesty possible,
but there are some lines there. there.
For example, you can consult with other students, but it's got to be you that
enters the right answer or the answer you think is correct.
In other words, the student needs to take all of that available information,
(16:31):
even talking with other people, and then they need to enter it in.
It is not acceptable to go to the ballgame while somebody else takes your test for you.
So you need to explain that to students. What is the acceptable behavior?
What is not the acceptable behavior?
You may recall that first day activity that I have my students do.
(16:53):
I described it in episode 24, the syllabus episode, so you might want to go
back and look at that if you don't remember it or didn't listen to it in the first place.
At the time, I believe I also mentioned that I give them case studies and academic
honesty to work on in small groups.
Here's this imaginary scenario, here's this imaginary student,
(17:14):
and here's what they do in this situation. Is that acceptable or not acceptable?
And then they can talk through that and then get my feedback on what I believe
is acceptable and, maybe more importantly, what I would deem as dishonesty that I would act upon.
In my first test, test zero, which I also mentioned in episode 24,
(17:36):
where it's a review of information I'd like them to know coming into the course,
but also in there are some questions from the syllabus,
I also put in there some questions about academic honesty honesty so that they
can get it wrong there as a test item and hopefully then they'll realize where
(17:56):
the lines are in terms of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.
And there's just too many examples to give here, but these will get us started,
get us thinking about how to do prevention in our class.
Now it's time for you to call in with your ideas. us.
It's a really great time to do that, really. Hit pause right now.
(18:19):
Go ahead, hit pause, call in, and then hit play again, and we'll pick it up.
Okay, are you back? You didn't do it, did you?
Go ahead, hit pause right now. Call in, takes a few seconds with some idea.
Even if it's very obvious or you think it's obvious to everyone,
(18:40):
it may not be. So go ahead, call in right now.
Okay, I'll assume that you did that or at least a few of you did that.
Or I hope just one of you did that at least. Come on, help me out here.
Let's move on to the next topic and that is consequences. So we talked about
having a talk about it, then we talked about prevention, some ideas for prevention.
(19:03):
Now let's talk about consequences. How are we going to handle that part of it?
Well, having consequences and enforcing those consequences, I think is part
of this overall scenario of helping to promote a culture of integrity and ethical behavior.
Just like in the real world, the presence of those consequences does have some
(19:23):
effect. But really, if this is what you're relying on to teach honesty to your
students, I'm not so sure it's going to work very well for you.
I think having consequences and enforcing those consequences is just one tool,
and it has to be part of a whole bigger picture of many tools being used to promote honesty.
(19:47):
One of the things that we need to do relative to consequences is to be thoroughly
familiar familiar with our school's policies and practices.
These change from time to time, so it's a common practice for me,
especially this time of year where we're starting a new academic season,
where I'll go back into the student handbook or wherever those policies and
(20:10):
practices are spelled out for my school and review them again and make sure
that I know what the steps are. are.
And oftentimes there are several different possible scenarios or pathways that are laid out.
So what I need to do is determine, before anything happens in my course,
I need to determine how I'm going to likely proceed in my own course.
(20:35):
And then the next thing I'm going to do is tell my students how I'm going to
likely proceed in my own course.
So I might lay that out in the syllabus. syllabus.
I might lay it out during that early conversation when we're talking about academic
honesty, or more likely I'll do it in both places, and I'll lay out what will
(20:55):
happen if they're dishonest in my course.
A lot of schools have steps of consequences that could eventually get to a point
where a student is suspended or even expelled, or they might even get retroactive
revocation of credit for the course.
And if that happens, that could lead to a retroactive revocation of a degree.
(21:20):
I think it's important to explain that, look, you might hope that all you'll
get is this small consequence or that moderate consequence, but you don't know
how things are going to proceed.
You are risking this being a very, very serious consequence.
And then explain the consequences to their professional life,
(21:44):
maybe even far into the future. I mean, do they ever want to get government
or military clearance someday?
I'm sometimes interviewed by institutions where they're doing a background check
on a former student because they're getting some kind of a security clearance.
And what about students that are going to end up in a job or in a field that
(22:07):
requires strict confidentiality?
Like, oh, I don't know, healthcare maybe or education.
I mean, there are a lot of fields like that, and word can get back,
especially these days with so much data being easily available to employers,
that they might find that these things happened early on, and they might not
(22:32):
get the job, they might not get the promotion,
they might lose the job that they
already have because of this history of dishonesty and lack of integrity.
It might not be a bad idea to explain to students that you have to take steps
if you catch them cheating.
Why do you have to? Because it's your job and you love your job and you want
(22:55):
to keep your job, so you're going to have to take steps if you catch them cheating.
If you don't take steps, well, then word on the street is that you're the kind
of professor who looks the other way.
And if word on the street is out there about your course and about how you handle
dishonesty, well, there goes that job you love.
(23:19):
And it casts a bad light on the program and the school.
And folks may get the idea that graduates from your school might be sketchy or incompetent.
Then everyone with credentials from your school might get painted with that same brush.
And then maybe the school closes because of it.
And then you and all your friends, all of whom also love their jobs,
(23:43):
are now out of work. work, and all your students who have a degree from that
school, maybe they can't get a job.
Okay, I know, that story got a little far-fetched, but it does illustrate the
idea that enforcing consequences protects the quality of our students' education,
(24:04):
and it protects the value of their degree from our school. school.
This promotes, I think, more of a group perspective on cheating.
In other words, it's not strictly a struggle between the teacher and the cheater.
This is a social phenomenon.
This is something that involves all of us. That social understanding of the
(24:29):
issue of academic honesty is what we need to establish in our course,
to maintain a culture of integrity in our course, at least that's my view.
Now, another strategy we have, besides having the talk, making sure we're taking
preventative steps, making sure that there are consequences and that we're enforcing consequences,
(24:51):
another strategy is to make sure that we are modeling professional integrity ourselves.
What do I mean by that? Well, here's an example.
What about copyright issues, issues of intellectual property? property.
There are a lot of myths out there about what is legal and not legal in terms
(25:13):
of using copyrighted material in our courses.
And it's no wonder because the law is kind of complicated on that issue.
Can we be sure that what we're doing and how we're doing it really does comply with the law?
Do we know the ins and outs well enough to know for sure that we are not violating the copyright laws.
(25:35):
For example, if we're showing a video in class, is that really licensed for that use?
Are we making fair use of it?
What about copying lab activities out of a lab manual and distributing that
or selling it in a bookstore?
Selling course packs containing copyrighted material in the college bookstore?
(25:58):
These are all pretty dicey and your college librarian can help you with those issues.
And in an upcoming episode, I'm going to have a friend of mine who's an expert
in these matters help clarify some of these issues and maybe bust a few myths
and help us find the material that we need to find.
But let's leave that aside and come back to the idea that we are all probably
(26:23):
violating laws or ethical norms forms without even realizing it,
like this copyright thing,
just like our students might do when they're plagiarizing and not realizing
that what they do actually is a form of plagiarism.
And what if we got caught maybe violating some copyright issues?
(26:44):
What if there was an audit of our teaching materials and we got caught?
How would we want to be treated?
Well, sure, I think all of us would expect to have to take our lumps.
It's like when we're speeding a little bit over the speed limit,
and we get caught, and we think, well, okay, yep, I was speeding.
I hope the fine isn't too big, and I hope this doesn't increase my insurance
(27:10):
rates and so on, but we'd expect to have to take the lumps, right?
But would we expect to be treated like we're pond scum? Would we expect the
harshest possible punishment for what we consider a minor infraction?
Would we expect to be believed that we thought, well, that we didn't fully realize
(27:33):
that we were transgressing the law?
So I'm thinking, maybe we should think of that scenario a bit and let it sink in for a minute.
And then maybe we'll approach violations of academic integrity in our course
with a bit more empathy than we otherwise might have.
(27:56):
So yeah, I'm back to that empathy thing again.
I think I'm often coming back to empathy because,
well, because I have to keep reminding myself every day to try as best I can
to put myself into the skin of my students and walk around in it for a while
or into the minds of my students.
(28:17):
It's a struggle for sure, some days more than others.
But I want to be very clear. I'm not saying that because I want to have empathy
and compassion for my students that I'm going to tolerate academic dishonesty
and that I'm not going to enforce the rules against it.
(28:40):
Compassion requires that we hold people accountable.
I just need to remember that I need to apply empathy when determining exactly
what steps to take in each case,
when I'm going to trigger the process of consequences, and when to determining
(29:01):
how I'm going to treat the students involved.
After all, these are students who have violated my trust in them,
have violated their classmates' trust in them, and it probably really provoked me.
But I want to be intentional about how I react.
(29:22):
Because the way I treat them will affect their lives going forward.
And will be part of what determines what kind of professionals,
what kind of people they'll eventually become.
You remember Greg Crowther, right? He's the guy who composed and sang the song,
(29:45):
A Physiologist's Blessing, that I played in the last episode.
That was a lot of fun, wasn't it? Well, Greg called in because he has something
to say about that other topic that came up in the previous episode on academic integrity.
Here's what he had to say. Greg Crowther, MD, PhD Hi, Kevin.
(30:05):
This is Greg Crowther calling in about episode 25. Of course,
I listened to it originally for selfish reasons, and it was fun to hear my song on that episode.
But I also wanted to react to something later in your show about academic integrity.
I thought you made the point, an important point, that we need to set a good
(30:29):
example for our students by demonstrating and modeling academic integrity.
And I strongly agree with you that we don't always model this as well as we should.
In particular, kind of a soapbox issue for me is when we put images on our slides
that come from other sources, not just the course textbook,
(30:51):
but we fail to specify where we got those images, those figures or those conceptual
diagrams or whatnot, that too is plagiarism.
So if you talk tough on plagiarism, but you show unattributed images,
then you're a hypocrite.
And so don't be a hypocrite.
(31:12):
Take the extra time to track down the sources for those images.
Even if it's a web address, that's something you can say, look,
this is not my original creative work.
I am borrowing this from somebody else. And the legal issue about whether you're
legally allowed to do that, I kind of put in a separate category.
(31:33):
I think, as you said in your show, the copyright law is complicated,
and I'm less concerned about figuring out technically whether we are in violation
of all the nuances of copyright law.
But I think at a bare minimum, we need to do what we ask our students to do,
which is to say, this is my original work, or if it's not my original work,
(31:56):
this is where I got it from.
I agree with Greg 100%. I think that setting aside the legal issues allows us
to focus on the issues of professional integrity and best practice.
And I agree that the best practice for professional integrity in an educational
(32:20):
setting is for us professors to model this idea of citing other people's work.
A lot of us, probably all of us, if we're using PowerPoint in our presentations,
we are using images from the textbook that we're using, and our publisher provides
us those images for that purpose.
(32:43):
We also, most if not all of us, bring in additional images because,
well, a textbook, no textbook, no matter how big it is, can fit all of the images
that we'd like to use in teaching and learning.
And of course, we all have our own way of telling the story.
And so that's probably going to require different images that are in the textbook,
(33:06):
or at least additional images than those that are found in the textbook.
When we do so, do we just throw them in there or do we cite them?
Do we either tell the students where they're from or do we cite them in the
slide itself and show that this is from Grey's Anatomy, this is from wherever,
(33:29):
whatever source it comes from, where did it come from?
And by doing that citation on a regular basis,
by showing the students that we are scrupulous about citing everything that
is not coming in from our own work, that is not generated by we ourselves,
(33:49):
then we are practicing what we are preaching to them.
Them, when they do their assignments, whatever those assignments are,
term papers, maybe they're turning in presentations.
PowerPoints, maybe they're doing a case study project, that they cite where
they're getting their information, where they're getting the images or diagrams that they're using.
(34:13):
I may have mentioned in previous episodes that I teach in a graduate program
for people who either are teaching anatomy and physiology or are preparing to do that.
It's a Master of Science in Human Anatomy and Physiology Instruction, HAPI, HAPI for short.
So we have a happy graduate program, and I'll get into more detail about that
(34:34):
program in a future episode.
But all of us in that program, we have our students producing some teaching
materials materials, as they study the human anatomy and physiology that they
need to take into the classroom.
And when they do a PowerPoint, or a term paper, or whatever,
a test bank, if they are using an image or something created outside of what
(35:00):
they're doing, they have to cite it.
They have to put in there what the source is. As a matter of fact,
we ask them to put in the source, even when they're taking something something
out of the textbook they're using for the course.
We have them cite in there which textbook it's from.
One of the reasons we do that is because of this best practice thing that Greg is talking about.
(35:24):
Another reason we do that is just for our own purposes as instructors,
that's a good habit to get into.
Because all of you do this right where you'll put together a presentation and
then a year, two-year, five years, or in my case, 25 years later,
well, no, 25 years ago, I don't think I was using PowerPoints.
We were using overhead acetate transparencies on an overhead projector.
(35:49):
But my point is, is that I need to know, well, I'm going to,
first of all, I'm going to mix and match those.
I'm going to go back to my old presentations. I'm doing that all the time,
where I pull out a few slides here and start over again.
Or I pull out a few slides here and put them into a different presentation.
(36:10):
Like I might be to a later chapter and I think, oh yeah, we need to review what
signal transduction is.
Is, and we first introduced that when I was talking about the plasma membrane
way back at the beginning of A&P 1,
and now here we are in the endocrine system, or here we are in the nervous system,
or here we are in some other system, and I need to talk about signal transduction,
(36:30):
I'm going to go back and pull those slides and add them in here.
If we didn't cite on every slide where those images came from,
we might not know where their origin was.
Then when I look at that and say, wow, that's really low resolution,
I meant to change that out because that's just too fuzzy when I project it.
How will I know where I got it so I can go back to the source and maybe get
(36:51):
a better image or find some other accompanying image that I vaguely recall was
there that I think, oh man, I should have used that. I should have grabbed that while I was there.
And now I don't know where it was I went to to get that.
Or maybe I'm using images from the textbook and I'm not quite sure.
Is that from the current edition?
Maybe that's been been updated, maybe the labels have been added to,
(37:15):
or maybe some other little part has been added in or taken away,
or it's been improved in some other way.
How do I know what edition it's from if I hadn't recorded what edition that was from?
So there's kind of a silver lining. It's not only modeling best practice of
professional integrity for our students to let them know is that's what we do as professionals.
(37:38):
We cite other people's work. we acknowledge the work of other people,
not only that, but it's also helping me as an instructor keep track of everything.
Where did it come from? Where did I get that?
Now, in an upcoming episode, a good friend of mine, Barbara Waxer,
who is a national speaker on this topic of what we can and can't use in the classroom,
(38:01):
where do we find images from the classroom, she's going to help us with all
of that in a future episode.
But in the meantime, if you have questions or comments like Greg did,
don't be shy about calling the hotline at 1-833-546-6336.
That's 1-833-LION-DEN. We're not done with this topic of academic integrity.
(38:26):
We're going to come back to that in a future episode. I guarantee it.
If you don't see links in your podcast player, go to the show notes at the episode
page listed at theapprofessor.org slash podcast.
And while you're there, you can claim your digital credential for listening to this episode.
(38:50):
And you're always encouraged to call in with your questions,
comments, and ideas at the podcast hotline.
That's 1-833-LION-DEN or 1-833-546-6336.
Or send a recording or written message to podcast at theapprofessor.org.
(39:12):
We'll pivot back to fresh, full episodes in late January, when I'll be giving
my predictions for next year.
If you have a prediction for where A&P instruction is headed, please send it in.
I'll see you down the road.
(39:32):
The A&P Professor is hosted by Dr. Kevin Patton, an award-winning professor
and textbook book author in human anatomy and physiology.
Music.
This episode has been reconstituted from concentrate using only 100% pure electron.
Music.
Guess what? This is one of our winter shorts.
Yep, that's right. It's a shorter than usual episode in which I present one
or two or maybe three or four classic evergreen segments from previous episodes
that is remastered, reconstituted,
and recycled for your listening and learning pleasure.
(00:23):
But mainly it's to give me a break for self-care over the holiday season.
We'll be back to our regular programming in late January.
Welcome to the A&P Professor, a few minutes to focus on teaching human anatomy
and physiology with a veteran educator and teaching mentor, your host, Kevin Patton.
(00:43):
Music.
In this Winter Shorts episode, I discuss academic integrity in the the Anatomy and Physiology course.
(01:06):
I want to spend a few minutes talking about academic integrity or academic honesty.
Now, this is something I mentioned briefly in a previous episode,
and I promised I'd get back to it.
Well, so here we are. Kevin Patton Since our students are likely in an A&P course
because they're in training for a profession and are being held to professional
(01:30):
norms in their practicum and clinical courses,
then academic integrity is really a matter of, well, professional integrity.
Maybe that's where we should start. In Ken Bain's book,
What the Best College Teachers Do, which is one of my favorite books books on
teaching, he interviews a whole bunch of master teachers,
(01:53):
people who are really well-respected and well-regarded by their peers and by
their students to find out, well, what makes a really great college teacher.
One of the things I got out of the book is that all of those master teachers,
they focus more on promoting a culture of integrity than they do on focusing
(02:15):
solely on prevention and and enforcement of rules regarding cheating and academic honesty.
So, the question is, how do we do that?
What are some practical ways we can promote a culture of integrity?
Well, one of the things, I believe, is to talk about it. Bring it up.
(02:39):
Now, the first place we can bring it up is in the syllabus.
In episode 24 of this podcast, the syllabus episode, I mentioned this and I
gave a link to a brief online article that I linked to from my own syllabus.
And I'll include that link again in the show notes and episode page for this episode.
But you can put that into your own brief words.
(03:02):
And you can do that in a way that is both professional and supportive rather
than, oh, maybe our knee-jerk response of being condescending and rule-making.
You may remember from the syllabus episode, episode 24, that my colleague Frank
O'Neill's concern in his syllabus is that by listing all the consequences of
(03:27):
wrong action, he's wondering if students get the wrong idea about him.
That really, he's a very supportive and compassionate teacher,
but that might not come through when when our syllabus is not really cast in that light.
So maybe we can reflect on how we address academic integrity in our syllabus
(03:47):
and in our other course materials using our Frank O'Neill filter as we do that to try and hear,
what we're stating through the ears of a student, a student who's just meeting us for the first time.
I have a snippet from my own syllabus in the show notes and episode page,
and it's not It's not perfect by any means, but it might spark some ideas for
(04:11):
putting it into your own words.
So besides the syllabus and other course documents, I think we should also talk
about it in the classroom.
Talk about it face to face with students.
As I mentioned earlier, consider framing it as part of their training as future
professionals in their careers.
(04:31):
Many of our A&P students are going into health professions and other fields
where integrity is not only taken very seriously, it can also be a matter of life and death.
When I do this with my students, I usually tell them about how my wife,
who is a nurse, and I always look at the state nursing newsletter when it comes in the mail.
(04:55):
And we do that because we want to see if we know anybody who's listed in the
section that It lists all the people who have been censured or lost their license
or had other professional integrity issues.
And as I look through those violations, a lot of them are violations that I
think a lot of folks would look at them and think, oh, those are kind of little violations.
(05:18):
Why are they getting hammered so hard for them?
But they're not really. They're not little. Things like not recording when meds
were given to a patient or misreporting the number of pills that were removed from the dispensary.
How many students feel like what they're doing when they cheat in class is just
(05:40):
a little thing and it doesn't really matter.
But there are serious life-altering consequences in the professional setting, aren't there?
Professional censure, loss of their professional license, meaning they can't practice anymore.
They might become target of a lawsuit. There might be criminal punishments involved.
(06:04):
And besides that, you're an A&P teacher and a lot of people who know you are
going to see it posted in the media.
And that kind of leads into a brief discussion of how integrity gets lost in the first place.
There's a lot of research that shows that dishonesty starts small and then slowly
(06:25):
gets bigger, sometimes quickly gets bigger, but it always starts small.
We get into the habit of it and soon we lose sight of the fact that what we're
doing isn't acceptable and that it really does have consequences.
And we lose sight of our own internal slide down that ethical road,
(06:46):
A road that is not going to serve us well and it's not going to serve others well.
We need to ask, do we really want to be unethical as health care providers?
Is that the direction we want to go in?
And on the flip side of that is, do we want unethical health care providers
treating us or our family and friends or handling our patient records?
(07:12):
This is usually the point where I, one of many points where I bring up that
recurring nightmare that all
A&P teachers have, and don't tell me that this has not occurred to you.
You know, having a dream where we wake up from unconsciousness as we're wheeled
into an emergency department,
or maybe we're in an ambulance and we wake up from unconsciousness and we look
(07:36):
up and we see the smiling face of a former A&P student.
And now here's where it can change a bit from from one night to another when
we have this dream, it's not always the same former student.
Sometimes it's that student who you caught cheating and they never change their
ways and they're unethical.
(07:58):
And we can imagine they're going to take shortcuts with our care.
They might steal our medicine or they might write down lies in the patient records
that that they're giving us therapies that they're not really giving or they're
writing down the wrong vital signs and so on because they're not even taking them.
(08:19):
And then in the dream, that's when you realize that your voice can't be heard.
Maybe you have an oxygen mask on and you're having trouble getting through and
you're screaming and yelling, no, no, no.
At that point is when you realize that you're restrained on the gurney and you
can't move either. either.
And so, you're panicking that this person who is dishonest is the one who's
(08:43):
in charge of care at a point when your life is in the balance, and then you wake up.
And then sometime later, you're going to have that dream again, so phew.
Let's get back on track here from that dream state and onto the right track,
the track of developing honesty and integrity and off the track of making a
(09:10):
habit of dishonesty and unethical behavior,
that is, unprofessional behavior.
Another way to promote integrity, besides having those conversations, is prevention.
Don't give opportunities for cheating if you don't have to.
And I know y'all probably have a whole mess of strategies that you're using
(09:32):
right now for prevention.
Hey, why not call into the podcast hotline at 1-833-546-6336.
That's 1-833-LION-DUN. And briefly tell us about it.
Really, your phone is right there. I know it is. You have it handy.
(09:55):
And when this segment is over, just hit pause, call in, and then hit play again.
Here are a few preventative measures that I recommend just to get us all thinking.
One is use several versions of each test that you give in class.
Now this is really easy with online tests.
(10:15):
But these days, it really isn't that hard to do it for paper tests as well.
There's all kinds of test editing software out there, like Respondus,
which I've mentioned before, and others that let you randomize tests easily.
It's just a press of a button, a few keystrokes, and you have several different
versions where the items are randomized.
(10:35):
You may also have the option of randomizing choices within multiple choice items
and matching items, and other items where there are different choices given.
So that can produce different versions of the same test.
And think about starting to build up your own test bank.
And that allows you to give some test items in one year, and then the next year,
(11:01):
take some of those test items and put them, well, like in a fallow field,
let them just sit there for a year or two while you introduce new items.
And so you're always rotating in items in and out, in and out,
so that the tests become different from year to year.
And add a few new ones every year. Take the old items and change them up so
(11:22):
that they're alternate versions of those old items.
Now you have more items to choose from and they're still asking the same kind of information.
They're still testing the same student outcomes.
And try to think up some completely new items. And so if you do that just a
little bit, every time you have a test, just add a few new items,
(11:43):
a few new items, before you know it, you've got 30 years of items built up.
At least that's what happened to me. I got this huge test bank now.
And it really wasn't much effort because it accumulates over time.
So when I give a face-to-face test, I always have three or four versions.
So I hand those out in class and they look identical from a few feet away. way.
(12:07):
For a student, there's a huge risk when they try to copy somebody's answer because
they're not really sure whether that student that they're looking at,
looking at their answer sheet.
They don't know whether it's really the same test or not.
And even if they can see the item they're looking at, it may look similar,
(12:27):
but maybe a little bit different on that other student's test.
And you can do something sort of like that for term papers, various projects
like case studies and other things like that.
And that is have multiple versions and swap them out from year to year or semester to to semester,
swap out the topics that you give, give different groups different topics to
(12:50):
work on, different case studies maybe, or different term paper topics,
and then pick case studies and term paper topics, assignment topics that are unique.
You know, do a little crafting in there and try to make them things that they're
not going to be able to easily look up online and,
you know, buy a term paper that's already written written, or find a case study
(13:15):
that's already out there somewhere, or at least not the answers to the case study.
So there are some things that you can do to prevent cheating.
And then this one, this one's really huge I think. This one,
if you don't do anything else, at least do this.
Give them examples.
I think that many students don't know what cheating is.
(13:38):
Really. I know it's hard to believe, but I'm convinced of it.
In fact, you are probably cheating right now in your teaching and either don't
know that what you're doing is wrong,
or if you are aware of it, you've pushed that awareness down deeper than your
(14:00):
conscious level of awareness.
Awareness, and I'll prove that to you in just a minute.
But getting back to our students, a good example would be plagiarism.
In my experience, a lot of students don't really know what plagiarism is,
at least they don't know all the varieties of plagiarism.
(14:21):
They might know how to do those different varieties of plagiarism,
but they don't necessarily know that what they're doing is wrong and that it is a form of plagiarism.
I think plagiarism just isn't fully understood by a lot of people.
So how do we fix that? We give examples. Give examples of what acceptable research
(14:43):
and paraphrasing and quoting are,
but then also give examples of things that are not acceptable and explain things
that, well, like hiring a person to do your work is not legitimate.
Buying a term paper online is not legitimate.
And why is it not legitimate? Because those are the rules of the assignment.
(15:05):
Those are the rules of the course. That's why it's not legitimate.
You were told not to do that.
But if all you say is don't plagiarize, they're not necessarily going to know
that they're breaking the rules.
They need to know where those lines are because, well, I think that a lot of
us assume that they come into our course knowing that already.
Already, and in my experience, many of them don't.
(15:28):
And these could even be some of your best and brightest students who just are
not aware of some of those kinds of plagiarism and that it's wrong.
Another example that you could give would be logging in attendance for students who aren't there.
A lot of students don't realize that's not acceptable and that that in fact
is dishonest. It's cheating.
(15:50):
Or another example would be getting help that they're not supposed to get.
Now, I give a lot of online tests and they're all open book and I encourage
my students to consult with one another, consult with anybody they want,
do some research online to get the right answer.
And when you have a test that's as open as that, I think a lot of students get
(16:11):
the idea that anything goes, that there's no dishonesty possible,
but there are some lines there. there.
For example, you can consult with other students, but it's got to be you that
enters the right answer or the answer you think is correct.
In other words, the student needs to take all of that available information,
(16:31):
even talking with other people, and then they need to enter it in.
It is not acceptable to go to the ballgame while somebody else takes your test for you.
So you need to explain that to students. What is the acceptable behavior?
What is not the acceptable behavior?
You may recall that first day activity that I have my students do.
(16:53):
I described it in episode 24, the syllabus episode, so you might want to go
back and look at that if you don't remember it or didn't listen to it in the first place.
At the time, I believe I also mentioned that I give them case studies and academic
honesty to work on in small groups.
Here's this imaginary scenario, here's this imaginary student,
(17:14):
and here's what they do in this situation. Is that acceptable or not acceptable?
And then they can talk through that and then get my feedback on what I believe
is acceptable and, maybe more importantly, what I would deem as dishonesty that I would act upon.
In my first test, test zero, which I also mentioned in episode 24,
(17:36):
where it's a review of information I'd like them to know coming into the course,
but also in there are some questions from the syllabus,
I also put in there some questions about academic honesty honesty so that they
can get it wrong there as a test item and hopefully then they'll realize where
(17:56):
the lines are in terms of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.
And there's just too many examples to give here, but these will get us started,
get us thinking about how to do prevention in our class.
Now it's time for you to call in with your ideas. us.
It's a really great time to do that, really. Hit pause right now.
(18:19):
Go ahead, hit pause, call in, and then hit play again, and we'll pick it up.
Okay, are you back? You didn't do it, did you?
Go ahead, hit pause right now. Call in, takes a few seconds with some idea.
Even if it's very obvious or you think it's obvious to everyone,
(18:40):
it may not be. So go ahead, call in right now.
Okay, I'll assume that you did that or at least a few of you did that.
Or I hope just one of you did that at least. Come on, help me out here.
Let's move on to the next topic and that is consequences. So we talked about
having a talk about it, then we talked about prevention, some ideas for prevention.
(19:03):
Now let's talk about consequences. How are we going to handle that part of it?
Well, having consequences and enforcing those consequences, I think is part
of this overall scenario of helping to promote a culture of integrity and ethical behavior.
Just like in the real world, the presence of those consequences does have some
(19:23):
effect. But really, if this is what you're relying on to teach honesty to your
students, I'm not so sure it's going to work very well for you.
I think having consequences and enforcing those consequences is just one tool,
and it has to be part of a whole bigger picture of many tools being used to promote honesty.
(19:47):
One of the things that we need to do relative to consequences is to be thoroughly
familiar familiar with our school's policies and practices.
These change from time to time, so it's a common practice for me,
especially this time of year where we're starting a new academic season,
where I'll go back into the student handbook or wherever those policies and
(20:10):
practices are spelled out for my school and review them again and make sure
that I know what the steps are. are.
And oftentimes there are several different possible scenarios or pathways that are laid out.
So what I need to do is determine, before anything happens in my course,
I need to determine how I'm going to likely proceed in my own course.
(20:35):
And then the next thing I'm going to do is tell my students how I'm going to
likely proceed in my own course.
So I might lay that out in the syllabus. syllabus.
I might lay it out during that early conversation when we're talking about academic
honesty, or more likely I'll do it in both places, and I'll lay out what will
(20:55):
happen if they're dishonest in my course.
A lot of schools have steps of consequences that could eventually get to a point
where a student is suspended or even expelled, or they might even get retroactive
revocation of credit for the course.
And if that happens, that could lead to a retroactive revocation of a degree.
(21:20):
I think it's important to explain that, look, you might hope that all you'll
get is this small consequence or that moderate consequence, but you don't know
how things are going to proceed.
You are risking this being a very, very serious consequence.
And then explain the consequences to their professional life,
(21:44):
maybe even far into the future. I mean, do they ever want to get government
or military clearance someday?
I'm sometimes interviewed by institutions where they're doing a background check
on a former student because they're getting some kind of a security clearance.
And what about students that are going to end up in a job or in a field that
(22:07):
requires strict confidentiality?
Like, oh, I don't know, healthcare maybe or education.
I mean, there are a lot of fields like that, and word can get back,
especially these days with so much data being easily available to employers,
that they might find that these things happened early on, and they might not
(22:32):
get the job, they might not get the promotion,
they might lose the job that they
already have because of this history of dishonesty and lack of integrity.
It might not be a bad idea to explain to students that you have to take steps
if you catch them cheating.
Why do you have to? Because it's your job and you love your job and you want
(22:55):
to keep your job, so you're going to have to take steps if you catch them cheating.
If you don't take steps, well, then word on the street is that you're the kind
of professor who looks the other way.
And if word on the street is out there about your course and about how you handle
dishonesty, well, there goes that job you love.
(23:19):
And it casts a bad light on the program and the school.
And folks may get the idea that graduates from your school might be sketchy or incompetent.
Then everyone with credentials from your school might get painted with that same brush.
And then maybe the school closes because of it.
And then you and all your friends, all of whom also love their jobs,
(23:43):
are now out of work. work, and all your students who have a degree from that
school, maybe they can't get a job.
Okay, I know, that story got a little far-fetched, but it does illustrate the
idea that enforcing consequences protects the quality of our students' education,
(24:04):
and it protects the value of their degree from our school. school.
This promotes, I think, more of a group perspective on cheating.
In other words, it's not strictly a struggle between the teacher and the cheater.
This is a social phenomenon.
This is something that involves all of us. That social understanding of the
(24:29):
issue of academic honesty is what we need to establish in our course,
to maintain a culture of integrity in our course, at least that's my view.
Now, another strategy we have, besides having the talk, making sure we're taking
preventative steps, making sure that there are consequences and that we're enforcing consequences,
(24:51):
another strategy is to make sure that we are modeling professional integrity ourselves.
What do I mean by that? Well, here's an example.
What about copyright issues, issues of intellectual property? property.
There are a lot of myths out there about what is legal and not legal in terms
(25:13):
of using copyrighted material in our courses.
And it's no wonder because the law is kind of complicated on that issue.
Can we be sure that what we're doing and how we're doing it really does comply with the law?
Do we know the ins and outs well enough to know for sure that we are not violating the copyright laws.
(25:35):
For example, if we're showing a video in class, is that really licensed for that use?
Are we making fair use of it?
What about copying lab activities out of a lab manual and distributing that
or selling it in a bookstore?
Selling course packs containing copyrighted material in the college bookstore?
(25:58):
These are all pretty dicey and your college librarian can help you with those issues.
And in an upcoming episode, I'm going to have a friend of mine who's an expert
in these matters help clarify some of these issues and maybe bust a few myths
and help us find the material that we need to find.
But let's leave that aside and come back to the idea that we are all probably
(26:23):
violating laws or ethical norms forms without even realizing it,
like this copyright thing,
just like our students might do when they're plagiarizing and not realizing
that what they do actually is a form of plagiarism.
And what if we got caught maybe violating some copyright issues?
(26:44):
What if there was an audit of our teaching materials and we got caught?
How would we want to be treated?
Well, sure, I think all of us would expect to have to take our lumps.
It's like when we're speeding a little bit over the speed limit,
and we get caught, and we think, well, okay, yep, I was speeding.
I hope the fine isn't too big, and I hope this doesn't increase my insurance
(27:10):
rates and so on, but we'd expect to have to take the lumps, right?
But would we expect to be treated like we're pond scum? Would we expect the
harshest possible punishment for what we consider a minor infraction?
Would we expect to be believed that we thought, well, that we didn't fully realize
(27:33):
that we were transgressing the law?
So I'm thinking, maybe we should think of that scenario a bit and let it sink in for a minute.
And then maybe we'll approach violations of academic integrity in our course
with a bit more empathy than we otherwise might have.
(27:56):
So yeah, I'm back to that empathy thing again.
I think I'm often coming back to empathy because,
well, because I have to keep reminding myself every day to try as best I can
to put myself into the skin of my students and walk around in it for a while
or into the minds of my students.
(28:17):
It's a struggle for sure, some days more than others.
But I want to be very clear. I'm not saying that because I want to have empathy
and compassion for my students that I'm going to tolerate academic dishonesty
and that I'm not going to enforce the rules against it.
(28:40):
Compassion requires that we hold people accountable.
I just need to remember that I need to apply empathy when determining exactly
what steps to take in each case,
when I'm going to trigger the process of consequences, and when to determining
(29:01):
how I'm going to treat the students involved.
After all, these are students who have violated my trust in them,
have violated their classmates' trust in them, and it probably really provoked me.
But I want to be intentional about how I react.
(29:22):
Because the way I treat them will affect their lives going forward.
And will be part of what determines what kind of professionals,
what kind of people they'll eventually become.
You remember Greg Crowther, right? He's the guy who composed and sang the song,
(29:45):
A Physiologist's Blessing, that I played in the last episode.
That was a lot of fun, wasn't it? Well, Greg called in because he has something
to say about that other topic that came up in the previous episode on academic integrity.
Here's what he had to say. Greg Crowther, MD, PhD Hi, Kevin.
(30:05):
This is Greg Crowther calling in about episode 25. Of course,
I listened to it originally for selfish reasons, and it was fun to hear my song on that episode.
But I also wanted to react to something later in your show about academic integrity.
I thought you made the point, an important point, that we need to set a good
(30:29):
example for our students by demonstrating and modeling academic integrity.
And I strongly agree with you that we don't always model this as well as we should.
In particular, kind of a soapbox issue for me is when we put images on our slides
that come from other sources, not just the course textbook,
(30:51):
but we fail to specify where we got those images, those figures or those conceptual
diagrams or whatnot, that too is plagiarism.
So if you talk tough on plagiarism, but you show unattributed images,
then you're a hypocrite.
And so don't be a hypocrite.
(31:12):
Take the extra time to track down the sources for those images.
Even if it's a web address, that's something you can say, look,
this is not my original creative work.
I am borrowing this from somebody else. And the legal issue about whether you're
legally allowed to do that, I kind of put in a separate category.
(31:33):
I think, as you said in your show, the copyright law is complicated,
and I'm less concerned about figuring out technically whether we are in violation
of all the nuances of copyright law.
But I think at a bare minimum, we need to do what we ask our students to do,
which is to say, this is my original work, or if it's not my original work,
(31:56):
this is where I got it from.
I agree with Greg 100%. I think that setting aside the legal issues allows us
to focus on the issues of professional integrity and best practice.
And I agree that the best practice for professional integrity in an educational
(32:20):
setting is for us professors to model this idea of citing other people's work.
A lot of us, probably all of us, if we're using PowerPoint in our presentations,
we are using images from the textbook that we're using, and our publisher provides
us those images for that purpose.
(32:43):
We also, most if not all of us, bring in additional images because,
well, a textbook, no textbook, no matter how big it is, can fit all of the images
that we'd like to use in teaching and learning.
And of course, we all have our own way of telling the story.
And so that's probably going to require different images that are in the textbook,
(33:06):
or at least additional images than those that are found in the textbook.
When we do so, do we just throw them in there or do we cite them?
Do we either tell the students where they're from or do we cite them in the
slide itself and show that this is from Grey's Anatomy, this is from wherever,
(33:29):
whatever source it comes from, where did it come from?
And by doing that citation on a regular basis,
by showing the students that we are scrupulous about citing everything that
is not coming in from our own work, that is not generated by we ourselves,
(33:49):
then we are practicing what we are preaching to them.
Them, when they do their assignments, whatever those assignments are,
term papers, maybe they're turning in presentations.
PowerPoints, maybe they're doing a case study project, that they cite where
they're getting their information, where they're getting the images or diagrams that they're using.
(34:13):
I may have mentioned in previous episodes that I teach in a graduate program
for people who either are teaching anatomy and physiology or are preparing to do that.
It's a Master of Science in Human Anatomy and Physiology Instruction, HAPI, HAPI for short.
So we have a happy graduate program, and I'll get into more detail about that
(34:34):
program in a future episode.
But all of us in that program, we have our students producing some teaching
materials materials, as they study the human anatomy and physiology that they
need to take into the classroom.
And when they do a PowerPoint, or a term paper, or whatever,
a test bank, if they are using an image or something created outside of what
(35:00):
they're doing, they have to cite it.
They have to put in there what the source is. As a matter of fact,
we ask them to put in the source, even when they're taking something something
out of the textbook they're using for the course.
We have them cite in there which textbook it's from.
One of the reasons we do that is because of this best practice thing that Greg is talking about.
(35:24):
Another reason we do that is just for our own purposes as instructors,
that's a good habit to get into.
Because all of you do this right where you'll put together a presentation and
then a year, two-year, five years, or in my case, 25 years later,
well, no, 25 years ago, I don't think I was using PowerPoints.
We were using overhead acetate transparencies on an overhead projector.
(35:49):
But my point is, is that I need to know, well, I'm going to,
first of all, I'm going to mix and match those.
I'm going to go back to my old presentations. I'm doing that all the time,
where I pull out a few slides here and start over again.
Or I pull out a few slides here and put them into a different presentation.
(36:10):
Like I might be to a later chapter and I think, oh yeah, we need to review what
signal transduction is.
Is, and we first introduced that when I was talking about the plasma membrane
way back at the beginning of A&P 1,
and now here we are in the endocrine system, or here we are in the nervous system,
or here we are in some other system, and I need to talk about signal transduction,
(36:30):
I'm going to go back and pull those slides and add them in here.
If we didn't cite on every slide where those images came from,
we might not know where their origin was.
Then when I look at that and say, wow, that's really low resolution,
I meant to change that out because that's just too fuzzy when I project it.
How will I know where I got it so I can go back to the source and maybe get
(36:51):
a better image or find some other accompanying image that I vaguely recall was
there that I think, oh man, I should have used that. I should have grabbed that while I was there.
And now I don't know where it was I went to to get that.
Or maybe I'm using images from the textbook and I'm not quite sure.
Is that from the current edition?
Maybe that's been been updated, maybe the labels have been added to,
(37:15):
or maybe some other little part has been added in or taken away,
or it's been improved in some other way.
How do I know what edition it's from if I hadn't recorded what edition that was from?
So there's kind of a silver lining. It's not only modeling best practice of
professional integrity for our students to let them know is that's what we do as professionals.
(37:38):
We cite other people's work. we acknowledge the work of other people,
not only that, but it's also helping me as an instructor keep track of everything.
Where did it come from? Where did I get that?
Now, in an upcoming episode, a good friend of mine, Barbara Waxer,
who is a national speaker on this topic of what we can and can't use in the classroom,
(38:01):
where do we find images from the classroom, she's going to help us with all
of that in a future episode.
But in the meantime, if you have questions or comments like Greg did,
don't be shy about calling the hotline at 1-833-546-6336.
That's 1-833-LION-DEN. We're not done with this topic of academic integrity.
(38:26):
We're going to come back to that in a future episode. I guarantee it.
If you don't see links in your podcast player, go to the show notes at the episode
page listed at theapprofessor.org slash podcast.
And while you're there, you can claim your digital credential for listening to this episode.
(38:50):
And you're always encouraged to call in with your questions,
comments, and ideas at the podcast hotline.
That's 1-833-LION-DEN or 1-833-546-6336.
Or send a recording or written message to podcast at theapprofessor.org.
(39:12):
We'll pivot back to fresh, full episodes in late January, when I'll be giving
my predictions for next year.
If you have a prediction for where A&P instruction is headed, please send it in.
I'll see you down the road.
(39:32):
The A&P Professor is hosted by Dr. Kevin Patton, an award-winning professor
and textbook book author in human anatomy and physiology.
Music.
This episode has been reconstituted from concentrate using only 100% pure electron.
Music.
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