Scholarship – Exploring Factors that Contribute to Nursing Students’ Willingness to Report Peer Academic Integrity Violations

This episode of the NLN Nursing EDge Unscripted Scholarship track features guests Shannon Stevenson, Kathryn Flannigan, and Amanda Willey. They discuss their study on factors that contribute to nursing students' willingness to report peer academic integrity violations. The study highlights the importance of modeling ethical behavior and maintaining consistency in academic integrity policies across faculty and clinical settings. The guests emphasize the need for proactive measures to prevent cheating and the role of faculty in creating a safe and supportive environment for reporting violations. The conversation also touches on the impact of emerging technologies like ChatGPT on academic integrity and the importance of adapting teaching practices to address these challenges.

Learn more about their work, Exploring Factors that Contribute to Nursing Students’ Willingness to Report Peer Academic Integrity Violations.

Stevenson, S. M., Flannigan, K., Willey, A., & Kaur, T. (2023). Exploring Factors That Contribute to Nursing Students' Willingness to Report Peer Academic Integrity Violations. Nursing education perspectives, 44(3), 140–146. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NEP.0000000000001090

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Transcript

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[Music] Welcome to this episode of NLN podcast Nursing EDge Unscripted the Scholarship track. I'm your  host Dr. Steven Palazzo a member of the editorial board for nursing education perspectives nursing  Edge unscripted and our track entitled Scholarship celebrates the published work of select nurse  educators from the NLN's official journal Nursing Education Perspectives and then NLN  Nursing EDge blog. The conversations embrace the author's unique perspectives on teaching  learning innovations and the implications for nursing program development and enhancement. This  episode the authors will discuss the author's article, Exploring Factors that Contribute to  Nursing Students' Willingness to Report Peer Academic Integrity Violations. The discussion  will focus on the unique findings of the authors and the article is in an Epub ahead of print and  you can find it on the NLN website. our speakers today are Dr. Shannon Morris Stevenson who's an  assistant professor at the Hodgson Woodridge School of Nursing at Emory University, Atlanta;  Dr. Catherine Flanagan who's an assistant professor at Arkansas State University School of  Nursing in Jonesboro; and Dr. Mandy Wiley who's an assistant professor at Salisbury University School  of Nursing in Salisbury, Maryland. Thank you for joining us we're so happy to have all of you here.  Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Thank you. So if you could just briefly describe  the purpose of your study and your findings and what drew you to this topic and what surprised  you about your findings? So this was part of a collaborative dissertation for the three of us  at Teachers College at Columbia University and we spent years talking about academic integrity and  the bits and pieces of it that we kept coming back to were do students know what an offense  is or how severe they think it might be? Do their faculty support policies that are in place and if  they see something are they going to say anything? So looking at those elements that's how  we kind of came to the the conclusion to write about this and to research this and look at the  willingness to report because we know as nurses that it's important that when you see something  wrong or unethical that you speak up because our patient's safety is at stake and modeling  that behavior in the classroom is pivotal so that they start to understand that culture of integrity.  Wonderful. What can faculty and schools of nursing do today to better facilitate an  open mechanism for reporting, responding to academic integrity violations reported by  peers while still maintaining that environment that supports unique and complex relationships  of a cohort? Will avoid that cohort disruption? I mean, I think it's really important that we model  as faculty what we want to see in our students and that can start from how we interact with  each other with faculty, how we're sharing our message. So I think it's really important that  we start there and just really with modeling what we want to see in our students because if we're  not being good role models then they're going to think, oh, well if they're not doing it it's okay  if I don't do it. Also providing consistency so the faculty act in a consistent force and have  similar standards that are upheld throughout all classes and even in the clinical setting.  You brought up a good point there, sorry to interrupt, about consistency, right we're  all very familiar with situations when there's inconsistency in using or applying  our policies within the institution and that causes some conflicts with students and faculty.  Having that consistent message would be very, very important and role modeling that too.  Yeah. I also think focusing on prevention is really important as well. In our our research  we're looking at a program improvement solutions and things that would encourage peer reporting  or that would make students feel empowered to speak up when they see something and  so I think that focusing on prevention - how do we make it so that the temptation to  cheat on an exam or plagiarize a paper is gone in the first place? So even something as  simple as randomizing your seat assignment during exams you know can make a difference and can say  this is something that we know is an issue. I think for so long faculty hide from the fact  that academic integrity violations are happening and we can't they are happening.   I think that if you're proactive and saying okay, this is how I set up our classroom  to be a safe space, in a safe space that you know that your classmates are doing the right thing.  We're definitely recognizing it, right, and acknowledging that it happens. We like to  think that nursing students don't cheat but they cheat just like every other student cheats, right?  Acknowledging that it happens, putting what you said in place, de-incentivizing cheating.  But that still doesn't get to the place of that ethical comportment, that okay, they're  putting barriers in place so I don't cheat and making it harder, but what is the impetus to  be cheating anyway? When we talk about nursing with that strong moral ethical code we  have our ANA Code of Ethics. How do we instill in people that, is it more about how we have  mandatory reporting and reporting that we can do in the hospital setting that is supposed to be  non-punitive and more systems based. Tell me  little bit about what some of your strategies  would be that have that are more to do with teaching the students in that ethical  comportment piece, aside from the other things we could do as instructors to mitigate some of these  things from happening in the classroom. I think it's important to address how the cheating that  may be occurring in the classroom is impacting the potential clinical outcomes for our clients.  Because if we have a student that's not being honest when they're taking an exam or working  on a paper or whatever that assignment is, are they really learning what's happening and is  that going to allow them to provide the optimal care or is it going to tell them that, hey, I  got by doing it here, maybe I cannot chart those vitals. I'll just take the last set and to really  working with them to show them there are negative patient or client outcomes that are going to come  from that is a place that we should really start. Yeah really linking that, it happens in the classroom but that safety, that professionalism aspect in the clinical setting.  I think through scenarios and that type of thing it's really what will be impactful. Yeah, I always  tell us my students I'm not here to teach you to to pass an exam. That's a bonus,  I'm glad if you're doing well of course, but what our purpose is is to prepare you for taking care  of complex patient needs and it's so much more than a grade. I think appealing to their  moral compass in that regard, you know...I kind of tie it back. I'm like, would you  want a nurse who cheated their way through nursing school taking care of you or your mom or your  child? Kind of thinking about it from that way, kind of appealing to their their ethical standards that  that we know that is in there. They wanted to be nursing students. It's the most  ethical profession. We just have to show them why it really does matter. Right. Very good points that  you all made there. What are some of your thoughts now I don't know how much you know about Chat GPT,  but it's been the talk of the last several weeks now and people are are using it  and I'm sure our students are already at least exploring it if not tempted to use it. What are  your thoughts about it's influence on academic integrity and what we're talking about here? I think it's going to make it a challenge because there are plagiarism detection software out there  that we've all utilized before, but they're not recognizing what this artificial intelligence is  actually generating at this point in time. It's going make faculty be a little more  hyper vigilant about what students are submitting and reading, what they're writing, is this even  consistent with what the student is, how the student is performing in class or how they  even have a conversation because those are the kind of things that even trigger me to look at  maybe go wait this may be something that it's not. I actually was in a forum looking at different  things the other day and I can't exactly remember which forum it was but one of the faculty said they  actually had their students do an assignment with it so they could see how that would come across  so that they had a baseline to compare something to if they needed to in the future. That's really  smart. They were going to do it. That's a great strategy, like a writing sample in the classroom  before you have writing assignments so you can. That's a lot of work on an instructor's part.  For sure, yeah. It certainly could work for a small class, but when you start talking about 80 to 150  students in one of your classes, boy, unless you have a lot of TA support that are trained, that's  going to be difficult. Yeah it's kind of scary, but if as we look forward to the new  Essentials that are coming out through AACN that's an opportunity also with this competency-based  assessment method to really think about strategies that we can do to assess our students in  their competency level that will kind of maybe mitigate some of this. Absolutely. That's what I  was going to say. I think we have to really be strategic about the types of assignments  that these students are completing because technology is always changing. There's always  going to be the next best thing that students have access to or it's all about  figuring innovative ways to assess what they know, assess to make sure that they're safe, competent  providers and maybe move away from some of these more traditional types of assignments.  So for each of you, what's the last takeaway message you want to leave for our podcast audience? Don't be discouraged. I think sometimes when you read some of this research and you think, gosh, like is everybody cheating and no, it's not everybody by any stretch of  the imagination, but I think you just have to acknowledge that it is happening. You know you  can't think, oh my students would never. You have to acknowledge it and you have to meet  at head on and really work to try to make it as a conducive environment to academic  integrity as you really can. Great. Thank you. I also think being aware of the changes because you  know we kind of when we wrote this Chat GPT wasn't around and it popped up in the last couple months  so we need to recognize that technology is driving some of this and to be aware of those changes and  just kind of stay in the know. I'm going to kind of build off of that with we always  have to change our practices to keep up with those things and so we have to be very open to  doing those things as well and recognizing that just because we did something this way last year  or two years ago it may not be the way that we're going to do it next semester or next year.   Well I want to thank the three of you so much for joining us for this conversation. I appreciate your  time and your expertise that you shared with us and this work that you did and broadening  our understanding of academic integrity and this peer to peer resistance  for reporting academic integrity concerns. You provided a lot of possible things for us  to think about as far as solutions are concerned and looking at going forward with some of this  technology that's advancing so quickly that's allowing and enabling students to find more  creative avenues to practice academic and integrity violations. For our podcast listeners,  thank you for joining us. Again, the article is Exploring Factors that Contribute to Nursing  Students' Willingness to Report Peer Academic Integrity Violations. I encourage you to go to  the NLN website and pull up this article and take a read. It's really interesting  and it's a great conversation starter so thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.