Building Academic Integrity into Your Course

One of the best ways to remove the urge to cheat is to remove the factors that cause students to feel that cheating is the best solution to pass. Often students decide to cheat when they are feeling underprepared, overwhelmed, or know that this is their one chance to improve their grade. For classes that focus exclusively on assessment using a midterm and a final, all of the pressure is on these two activities. Instead, provide frequent low-stakes assessments throughout the course. Students have a better confirmation of what they learned closer to when they should have learned it. You have a better understanding of what the students did learn and can adjust your teaching accordingly. There is also an opportunity for a student to not do well on one activity, learn from it, then do better next time, and not significantly impact their grade. Use a mix of low-stakes assessments, such as:

• Simple “check-your-knowledge” quizzes using the myCourses Quiz tool. Questions can be set to provide question-level feedback and an immediate automatic grade.
• Brief written assignments, blogs, projects, or study guide summaries where students synthesize material.
• Activities that focus on the process and emphasize practice.
• Discussion forums with “apply-level” prompts where students synthesize their “remember-level” learning into a response. Students engage with other students to display conceptual understanding.
• Students build a study guide or a user's guide to a particular topic. They may do so in Google Drive or another collaboratively authored space.

Develop a grading scheme that corresponds to the amount of work required or expected for each activity; if online discussion takes up 20% of the students’ time, it should be worth 20% of the final grade.

A more holistic approach is to foster a culture of academic integrity in the course. At the beginning of the course, facilitate a dialogue on why academic integrity matters, what academic integrity looks in that discipline, and what is expected of the students. Then reinforce that message throughout the course. By doing this, you promote mutual trust and respect, and encourage students to be accountable for their own actions.

Some topics to focus on:

• Be clear when students should collaborate or not collaborate. Also discuss why it is important for students to work on their own in certain situations.
• Discuss the appropriate use of resources for school versus work versus home contexts (e.g. reference sheets, looking up answers, use of AI, use of Gitlab).
• Discuss the value of intellectual property and authorship, especially as it exists in the current digital culture and sharing culture.
• Explain the meaning behind assignments, for example, what skills or knowledge the students should gain by doing the assignment. If students feel like assignments are meaningful to them and are not busywork, they may feel less likely to cheat to just get an assignment over with.
• Have students collaborate on a class honor code. The honor code will have more meaning to students if they are involved in creating it. You can include this class honor code in assignment or exam instructions as a reminder. Students can be asked to sign off that they followed the class honor code when submitting their assignment or starting their exam.
• Review Turnitin's "Starting the Year: How to Establish a Culture of Academic Integrity" for additional ideas.

If using short, low-stakes quizzes, additional approaches may not be necessary.

If the learning objectives support giving a larger exam or for disciplines that use exams for credentialing, you can configure Settings in myCourses Quizzes to Promote Academic Integrity.