Associate Professor Dr. Raminta Pučėtaitė (Vilnius University Kaunas Faculty of Humanities) presented the results of the research “The Status of Scientific Research Ethics in Lithuania” in an international conference in Jacksonville (Florida, US).
On integrity and responsibility – professionally and academically
On February 28 – March 2, 2014, a conference on the academic professionalism in Jacksonville invited over 200 researchers, representatives of academic institution administrations and student representatives from the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Colombia, Czech Republic and Lithuania. They discussed the progress in ensuring academic integrity in higher education institutions. The conference was organised for the 22nd time by the International Center for Academic Integrity. As the director of the centre, Dr. T. Fisher maintained, the management of the centre would like for the centre to one day become the centre of academic integrity; however, their main vision is to encourage academic integrity, hereby the title. The representative of Kaunas Faculty of Humanities Associate Professor Dr. Raminta Pučėtaitė presented the results of her research under the title “The Status of Scientific Research Ethics in Lithuania” (Project No. MIP-37/2010).
What are the ways to ensure academic integrity?
According to the Associate Professor, the most impressive was the serious attitude of institutions in North America towards the security of academic integrity for not only plagiarism testing software, but also various educational programmes implemented by particular structures of universities and colleges, and various students’ commissions. They all have one goal, i.e. to decrease the extent of copying, plagiarism and other forms of academic disintegrity. Thus, majority of the presentations dealt with the analysis of the good practices, discussed their methodological, pedagogical and philosophical principles. A lot of attention was directed towards a former paid writer of academic works, the author of the book The Shadow Scholar D. Tomar who shared his insights about the models of this kind of “business”, the reasons for their emergence and possible prevention tools. The academic community had a lot of questions for D. Tomar about not only the legal aspects of his activity, but also the salaries of similar “writers”.
Students are concerned with their academic reputation
Some Academic Integrity Officers shared their experience of creative programmes against copying and plagiarism. They talked about the Kolb Experiential Learning model, narrative, “conscience information” methods that they themselves used, and supported their statements by the feedback with their students. Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies R. Pučėtaitė was fascinated by the strong position of the students who participated in the conference. According to her, the young participants were especially motivated to educate professionalism in their academic communities and were ready to develop the reputation of their institution by applying academic disintegrity prevention tools in their college.
“I also liked the fact that the organisers purposefully exploited the time of the conference for formal presentations and networking. Even the time for lunch or dinner was divided in a way that we would have an opportunity to meet and interact with the colleagues sitting at the same round table and to listen to the plenary presentation”, said Dr. Raminta Pučėtaitė.
The Associate Professor is thankful to the Research Council of Lithuania for funding of the trip and participation in the event.