The University Advising Council has asked Academic Assembly members to begin making recommendations about improving the promotion of academic integrity, specifically in regards to Internet plagiarizing. As the use of the Internet increases, the administration has become concerned with plagiarism becoming easier.

"Anytime you lower the cost of an activity you get more of it, so the Internet has made it easier to cheat," said Dirk Mateer, economics senior lecturer and co-director of undergraduate studies.

Brad Hoagland, vice president of operations, said that the recommendations, which were discussed at the Academic Assembly meeting Monday night, should include a solution to blatant plagiarism.

He said he thinks some people do not know when they are plagiarizing.

Mateer said he thinks students are aware of the policy. "I think Penn State's policy on academic integrity is very clear," Mateer said. "Students know when they are breaking it."

Mateer said the only confusion he has encountered was students who were not sure when they were allowed to work with each other on projects or assignments.

Nicole Belolan, a representative from the College of the Liberal Arts, said one of the solutions would be for teachers to discuss academic integrity more during classes. Jeffrey Markowitz, Council of Commonwealth Student Governments academic affairs director, said there is a misconception in some high schools that if information is in three or more sources, it is considered common knowledge.

Using the same paper for another class is considered plagiarism, but some people do not understand this, Kelly Gregg, a representative of the College of Arts and Architecture, said.

The Academic Assembly has not approached the issue of academic integrity for years, but recently the administration has seen the majority of plagiarism cases because of Internet misuse.

The University Advising Council, which is made up of administrators, asked the Academic Assembly to make recommendations on how to tackle the problem.

"We are just getting started on it, but we already have some ideas," Belolan said.

Some ideas to improve the awareness of the perimeters of plagiarism include the discussion of academic integrity in the FTCAP sessions, first year English classes and freshman seminars. The consequences for violating academic integrity policy should also be explained more, Belolan said.

"We must show that it's easy to get caught," Sen. Ashley Harris of the College of the Liberal Arts, said.

The Academic Assembly plans to evaluate how effective the current policy is in defining what is considered plagiarism and whether it still applies to the heavy use of the Internet as a resource, Mark Levin, Academic Assembly president, said.

Members of the Academic Assembly hope to have the recommendations ready to be presented by the end of March, Belolan said.