Voices for Voices®

Balancing Act: Academic Integrity and Mental Health in Higher Education (Part 2) | Episode 145

• Founder of Voices for Voices®, Justin Alan Hayes • Season 3 • Episode 145

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Balancing Act: Academic Integrity and Mental Health in Higher Education (Part 2) | Episode 145

Chapter Markers
0:01 State of Higher Education and Ethics
13:59 Academic Integrity Challenges in Higher Education
20:29 Educational Integrity and Mental Health

What happens when the principles of academic integrity collide with the realities of student mental health? Our latest episode promises to unravel this intricate web through real-life scenarios and expert insights. From the story of two students submitting identical papers to the broader implications of administrative inconsistencies on academic rigor, we shed light on the often-hidden challenges educators face. Learn how technology and the COVID-19 pandemic have further complicated the landscape, making the balancing act between supporting student well-being and upholding academic standards even more precarious.

Join us as we navigate these murky waters, sharing personal experiences and examining the ethical dilemmas that arise in higher education today. We delve into the rise of AI and its impact on plagiarism detection, recount a relevant court case involving ethical decision-making, and discuss the importance of maintaining integrity to prepare students for real-world challenges. This episode is a must-listen for anyone invested in the future of education, offering a comprehensive look at the intersection of academic integrity, mental health, and the evolving educational environment.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. I am your host, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, justin Allen Hayes. Thank you for joining us today. We are very grateful for you watching, listening, reading our transcript to this episode and the other 140 plus episodes that we have on all the video platforms and audio platforms. Again, if you can like, share comment, that'll help us reach the goal that we've set to help 3 billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond Doesn't cost anything to like and share comment, and so we really would appreciate that. And thank you for your ongoing support. We can't continue to do this without you.

Speaker 1:

So this episode is part two of the state of higher education and mental health. So it's a continuation from last week's episode, and so I was kind of talking a little bit about the intricacies of teaching, working with faculty and staff and students and big publishing organizations, companies, and I was running into some roadblocks. So let's think of another thing. So I'm saying close your eyes, think about you being a teacher and you have an assignment that's due, and assignment is turned in to you, and so, as you're grading, you're going through, you see one paper and then you know the rest of the students. You see another paper like this. I think I've heard or read something very similar. And so, as you're kind of going through things, you find that two papers, two different students, exactly the same Verbatim, punctuation, the exact same. Only thing changes is the name on it. And so you start to think like, oh well, well, this is obviously plagiarism, so it doesn't doesn't take an advanced degree to figure that out. And so I, you know, went to the, the head of the business school, spoke about it and said look, in the syllabus which the university gives a lot of guidelines on a different you know, the accommodation, the grade scale, there's all different kind of areas that get covered in the syllabus, and one of them talks about you know, hey, if you plagiarize, you can get a zero or up to administrative withdrawal, which basically means, as an instructor, you're kicking them out of that class and they got to take it again at a different time.

Speaker 1:

And as we think about ethics, right, we think about okay, we have a one page paper, that's exactly the same. And so I wanted to set an example. And so we hear about think about court cases, right, I used to watch court TV or checking out and attorneys they'll talk about like we believe this because of this case and this case and this case it happened five years ago or whatever, and so they're really just showing their proof. These examples happen. So, judge, please rule in our favor. And so I wanted to set an example, because the same administrator told me at the very beginning that you have to set an example that students I mean and I was a student before, so I'm not going after all students so I understand that if a student has a full-time faculty member versus a part-time faculty member, sometimes they treat them with a little less respect or what have you. So you need to really stand firm on your kind of guidelines, right? So I looked at that as okay. I want to set an example so future students will understand that if you turn in the exact same paper, you're out. If you're in the real world, there are certain things you do that you lose your job over, and having to retake a class is, yeah, it's going to cost extra money or what, but you have to set boundaries somehow, some way. If you're going to put it in a syllabus, you have to be able to stand firm.

Speaker 1:

And so I met with the administration and saw the papers, brought the two students in. We spoke about it, we did one at a time to get their stories, and they said, oh no, you know we worked on it together but we didn't do it. It wasn't exactly the same. And so we put them in front of each other and said can you identify other than the names on these papers? Can you find something that's different, different punctuation, different word, what have you? And they weren't able to. I wanted to because they, because the students were still denying it right. So as a student, I would think if I was in their shoes I'm like, oh crap, I got caught, I shouldn't have did it.

Speaker 1:

And so in my mind was, if the students come in and you know, they admit it and say, yeah, you know what I screwed up and I shouldn't have done it. But they didn't do that, they both stood firm, said they, I don't know, I didn't copy from their paper. It's like, yeah, you kind of did. It's plain as day. And so I wanted to administratively withdraw these students to set an example, for lay that foundation for me as a part-time instructor of saying, look, you're not going to do this in my class and administration said nope, you can't do that. You can give them a zero on that assignment, but you can't do that. And I said why do we have this in the syllabus? Why do we have this clause, these sentences we talk about? Up to which level? Well, it's in examples, where it's obvious. And I said, well, it's pretty obvious.

Speaker 1:

We both looked at the same paper before we even brought the students in. So we both kind of agreed and we even went into the electronic file and we saw that the file. So you go into properties and say who worked on it last. And we were able to match up. They were like, oh yeah, you worked on this for 30 seconds or a minute and it was originally created by this person. And so I mean one given the benefit of the doubt, benefit of the doubt, and so I didn't get the backing. And so that's kind of like being in the real world, right, and you notice something, you bring it up and your boss, your manager, your colleague, they don't back you up. They're just like, oh, just forget about it, just move on. It's like, no, ethically, that's just not right to do that.

Speaker 1:

So that was kind of one of the first kind of run-ins where I tried to test. I don't say try to test, but I tried to stand firm on on something that I was able to go. Look, I even had them all sign a I'll say like a waiver, saying I've read you know this syllabus and name and date. So I even had that like you signed this, you sign this, we had all you know. Forensically, you'd hear we had everything and I was able to give a zero like okay. Well, one of the reasons I was given was well, you know they're an athlete and you know they won't be eligible for you know the season or for a period of time. And it's like that's not my fault as an instructor, is it that two students they knowing they had to know because it's exactly the same they did that, so they didn't follow the rules. And we're saying that we could do this. This is, you know, standard, uh wording that all classes, all syllabus, syllabi, need to have in. So that kind of made me take a step back, right.

Speaker 1:

So I talked about last episode about big publishing and not being able to sell my book, which, again, I would argue that there's more actionable things in my book than many of the textbooks that I've seen. While we need to learn the terms, right, we need to learn what the four Ps of marketing are and do some case studies and presentations and all that. But we should also be learning hey, if I have an opportunity for an internship this semester or this quarter, something that could help me, why wouldn't I utilize that? So some students were telling me like yeah, and I came in the class after I was told I couldn't do it and said apparently, you know, I'm not allowed to do this.

Speaker 1:

Because more students came in and they wanted to buy the book because they were finding that it was helpful, it was easy, it was short, didn't take a lot of time to read, it had actionable items in there. And they said why can't I do it? And I said, oh well, here's what happened. And they're like well, why wouldn't you be able to do that? It's helping. Giving us some thoughts for what's to come, which is we go to school to learn and to be ready for the workforce is where we're at.

Speaker 1:

So that was interesting when some of the students said, well, can I still buy it for extra credit? And even if not for extra credit, can I still buy it? So I was like, yeah, if you go to Amazon, you can do, you can get it there. And so that was, you know, kind of that first thing that was happening, hit the rock bottom mentally and kind of hit, say, like a little bit of my ego. But more of you know, you go through class, you go through ethics, you go through things and like you're trying to help, like my intentions were to help, it wasn't to get rich, like I said, how many books I had to sell, to each one get $3. So divide them, you know, a million divided by three, and that's how many books I'd have to sell to make a million dollars.

Speaker 1:

We think about things like that and then so the integrity part was coming into play with when we can't administratively withdraw them. We don't wanna lose them, cause enrollment's down, it's down across the board Education, cause some parents and some students are finding you know what, I don't need a degree to be an influencer or to whatever those things that they want to do. Maybe they would want to go to trade school, right, and why are the trades important? Well, let's say we're wrapping up summertime and in Ohio if it reaches, say, 90 degrees, or even in the 80s, and you have air conditioning, the air conditioner goes out. Do you want to be in your house with that temperature and outside, no, you want to have that fixed so you can again be more comfortable. And so trades are very much in demand and that's a path some individuals are taking and others are taking the 100% online the University of Phoenix's of the world that have been there and they're continuing just to grow Like, yeah, I can just do this at home, and COVID really made that like, oh well, if I'm going to be home anyways from my class, like I'm just going to transfer from here to there because I can save some money and I don't have to drive to class, I don't have to pay for room and board, whatever those reasons are. So those are some of the things you know at this point as the story's building that I'm working through integrity, you know, trying to help. You know I didn't have greed on my mind.

Speaker 1:

The next class, after those two students had plagiarized, a student in that class had dropped the class and so they were retaking the class the next semester. So I recognized the student, turned in a paper and I was like somebody did this. It happened to be on Gojo. I just remember that because it was a local company. I read it and I'm like this sounds familiar. I think there was a student last class that wrote something similar. That's what I did. I tried to ask students to do a different company for those very reasons. I don't want 20 papers on Apple or 20 on Lululemon or what have you. I want some diversification so there's less of an incentive to copy somebody else's paper.

Speaker 1:

So I look at this paper and then I went back to I still had the paper from a prior term and here it was same papers. I mean different names, same papers. Changed the name, that was it. Looked at it electronically. The person who had created it was the person was a student that was in the class before the next person, which was a student that turned it in the plagiarized paper again. They edited it for like 20 seconds. It was so short of a time. It was again. You didn't need any special training to notice that.

Speaker 1:

So now I'm like this person took a paper, kind of explaining it to the administration, and I said I'm going to administratively withdraw this student. They were in the last class, they knew what the breakdown was because they didn't drop the class until after the due date was for that paper. They had a couple extra weeks that they could still be in class before they had to drop it. So the drop date. And so I showed again same two papers. Here's the electronic screenshots of the properties.

Speaker 1:

I'm like I saw a word oh, we can't. You can give the student a zero, but you can't withdraw them again. Why do we have this in our syllabus? It makes no sense at all. So again, these things are just starting to add up. I'm like, okay, you have it in the syllabus. I'm supposed to be partially talking about integrity and ethics and I'm not allowed, right? I feel like I'm not allowed to do that because my parent says I'm not allowed to, even though it's written right here or what have you? Or we have this contract or disagreement. So that kind of again was bothering me.

Speaker 1:

Covid hits the integrity went down even, even even further, because now I'm not able to even see many of the students because we're doing 100% online and AI is starting to work its way into the mainstream and it's becoming harder and harder to detect if somebody else wrote that paper or they took a chunk of paper. They went into some AI program, they took a chunk of paper from somebody at UC Berkeley and another half from some student turned in something similar from University of Wisconsin or whatever those were. It was very hard to figure that out with the now artificial intelligence really taking the hold. So the main theme here is we take a step back. Publishing integrity, my book, those types of things it really brings out. Well, we're being told to be experiential teachers, but the experience is actually less experiential is really what's occurring. And so we talk about the state of higher education. My experience there are 10 years plus that I've had this experience. This is what's occurring at some universities and it's very troubling, and I know that there are some in higher administrative positions don't agree with taking the less experiential learning and teaching out, because I personally have had conversations and I've been told go ahead, talk about your.

Speaker 1:

You know, keep talking about mental health too, you know, don't. Obviously it's. I'm not teaching mental health, but I can. I'm an expert on my mental health and myself, um, and so another way, I was kind of brought in well, don't talk about that, because it's a little bit deep. I was like, well, okay, it's a little bit deep. What about that student that I had whose parent died by suicide and they're working through things. Do you mean to tell me that it's too deep for that person to have just a frank conversation? Not talking about the students, not talking about here's my mental health and here's me as a human being. You may be going through some of these things, you may not. If you are and you want to talk to somebody here, here are ways that you can. You can do that. And so again, on one end and being told you know, this is a big, obviously it's a. It's huge. Out there there's still, there's a big stigma around it and I can't think of any other group of individuals than students that mental health is really affecting students, that mental health is really affecting, even if they don't have a parent or level one, pass away.

Speaker 1:

You know, due to suicide, that individuals right, I remember moving out of house and living on campus and all the different stressors that come, come with it, and I again was again just feeling like I should. I could share this. You know, if we're going through an assignment in class or we're going through something where I, like this could be extra stressful. So you know, let me know how see me after class. We can meet when, you know, obviously, let me know how, see me after class. We can meet, you know, obviously privately, and and talk through things Like I'm not going to tell on the student.

Speaker 1:

I mean, if that student's saying, you know, here I'm, I got a plan and here's what I'm going to do and I'm going to, that's different. But if it is a conversation like hey, I'm just very stressed different. But if it is a conversation like I'm just very stressed, I give extensions on assignments of a student is really truthful and they're talking about like I'm just going through a lot. You know, here things have happened. In fact I'm. I think I'm more welcoming to that that they say that Now are some using me to have an extension on paper. Maybe, you know, I, I, I can't impact, I can't really control that, but I can say you know what, if I was in their shoes, here's how I would hope that a teacher would be.

Speaker 1:

So again, I'm being pulled aside. You know you're talking a little too much. You know you're talking about mental health and you know this is a marketing class and and and and the other year I'm hearing. You know, go ahead, like you know, share your experience as as it, as it comes up in class, and so I guess, as we work our way through to the end of this episode, the second part of this state of higher education and mental health, my summation really is if you're at a job, if you're at a place where there's written language that says, hey, you can do this, and it's not trying to be like, oh, I'm powerful and I'm directing you to do this.

Speaker 1:

I'm just following what the higher administration has put in the syllabus. And that's to me integrity if we stick by it, because the next class that I teach, those students are going to talk to the past students and say, oh yeah, he doesn't implement this and he doesn't check for this and you're able to do this, that and the other. I was a student before I got my MBA, so I got a couple extra years of working through that as a student. So I'm not speaking from like a standpoint of like, oh well, you should do this and this and this. I'm saying, oh well, if you're going to put this in a syllabus, you probably should stand up for it, because otherwise people aren't going going to learn, they're going to get into the workforce and they might end up losing their job and not able to pay bills and and it can add to a whole lot of uncertainty and that could lead to maybe some type of addiction and you drinking what have you. That's the path that if we don't stand firm on, I think there's protests out there for different and various reasons, and that is understandable. And I've never brought any of that into the classroom. It's all been strictly about learning and trying. I don't want to waste a student's time and I don't want to waste my time. So we're going to go through the content and I'm going to try to give you as a student, what I know Now. You can take it or leave it, but at least I'm going to give that experience. And that's really troubling to find out that some administrators are moving away from that as saying, oh, I don't want. You know.

Speaker 1:

I had one student come in and tell me. Well, he talked about this court case. Well, the court case was very pertinent. Why? How is it pertinent to marketing? Well, it was with the American Marketing Association. I was the president, a past president, embezzled and was charged with grand theft of taking over $10,000 from the checking account. So it's relevant because I didn't want to be in that position, but I was in that position and had to make a decision.

Speaker 1:

It was hard to file a police report and go through the criminal justice system or not. And so I brought that up in class and the student said, oh, he mentioned their name. I say, well, it was it. Um, it was all public information. You know, just because the person's name is not Donald Trump doesn't mean that the information is not public. Uh, the information is a hundred percent public, that that I shared and in fact, uh, I stood firm on being a founder of Voices for Voices of second chances. I've been given second chances, and so that individual who we did go through the criminal justice process. They did have to, they did have penalties that they had to work through, but there's now a way for certain crimes for the record to be expunged, meaning that if they apply for a job, they won't have to say that they were convicted of grand theft. And so that was the part I was ending on as I was going through that.

Speaker 1:

That, that, that experience, that story is saying look at the given time that we had to make a decision, we went through the process as a board and then person wants this to happen. And so for me, again, it comes back to integrity. If I'm going to lead an organization, if I'm going to talk to you and speak to you and give you my experience and share with you, I have to say that old saying you've got to keep it real, you've got to stand up. And so that's where the integrity, with the classes and the solace and the plagiarism. And then this court case came in, and so I brought that into the classroom because at some point, one or more of those students are going to potentially be part of a nonprofit and they might be on a board sometime and they may find themselves in the same position on a board sometime and they may find themselves in the same position and given again, marketing association, marketing class, real world experience, experiential teaching uh, that I I find very troubling that administrators are taking potentially future classes away from instructors that are doing what they're asked to be doing because they're afraid, because enrollment continues to drop, and for you know, again, going to the trades, going to community college online what have you?

Speaker 1:

And so we don't want to rub anybody the wrong way. Community college online what have you? And so we don't want to rub anybody the wrong way. They're an athlete and we can't have this person ineligible. So all this to say when you're in a situation you can make whatever decision you would like to make. I, not only as instructor, but as a leader of this organization, will make decisions on integrity, and thank you for tuning into this episode Very important. Please share, like with others Until next time. I am the founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, justin Allen Hayes, and please be a voice for you or somebody in need.

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