Academic Integrity
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Academic Integrity and Remote Teaching
The commitment of the University of Saskatchewan to academic integrity and fair assessment remains in place during this time of remote and online learning. As instructors, here are key points for academic integrity: You should explain your rules again, or any shift in your rules, for assessments. Clear understanding by students improves students’ academic integrity. You should explain the reason for the rules and how the rules improve learning and/or make the assessment more fair. Transparency about purpose and decisions improves students’ academic integrity. You should avoid statements focused exclusively on penalties – these are ineffective at deterring dishonesty. Instead, commit to following up on academic misconduct concerns as…
- Academic Integrity, Assessment and Evaluation, Instructional / Course Design, Instructional Strategies
Promoting Academic Integrity: Some design questions for instructors
[social_share/] [social-bio] Here are some propositions about students’ academic integrity that I’ve been working with: Students are more likely to do their work honestly when they see the personal value in what is to be learned. Students are more likely to do their work honestly when they believe the assessment produces actual evidence of what they have learned. Students are more likely to do their work honestly when they’ve had the chance for practice and feedback. Students are more likely to do their work honestly when they know the rules and expect them to be enforced. Designing assessments for academic integrity is much more than tight invigilation processes and tools…
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Talking with Students About Suspected Plagiarism: Ten Guiding Questions
[social_share/] [social-bio] As assignments start to come in, this can be the time in the term when faculty notice what may be inadvertent or intentional plagiarism by students. Hopefully, you rarely encounter this yourself. But, if you do suspect plagiarism, how can you best proceed? Here’s what I would do… First, become familiar with the institutional policy and any particular procedures with respect to this policy in your department or college. Next, I suggest that you discuss the matter with the student(s) you suspect. Here are ten guiding questions offered to help you to prepare for and to anticipate the potential directions of a discussion: Why am I asking to discuss…
- Academic Integrity, Educational Technology, General, Instructional / Course Design, Instructional Strategies
It’s Course Design Not Entertainment: A visit from John Boyer
[social_share/] [social-bio] On October 7, we had the pleasure at the University of Saskatchewan of welcoming John Boyer from the Geography Department at Virginia Tech to speak with us about his innovative and increasingly acclaimed approaches to teaching large classes and his approaches for motivating learning and designing assessment. Recordings of his talks are available at these links, and are embedded at the end of this post. 1. Assessment Innovations that Reduce Cheating and Enhance Learning 2. Teaching (Really) Large Classes (Very) Well There is some repetition between them since there were slightly different audiences in attendance at both sessions and John therefore needed to describe the format of his…
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Defining Shared Thresholds for Dealing with Academic Dishonesty
[social_share/] [social-bio] The Academic Misconduct Policy at the University of Saskatchewan recognizes that as instructors, we often are in a great position to judge the severity of an act of dishonesty and to situate that act in the context of our course. The informal procedures available through the U of S academic misconduct policy set clear parameters—to apply a grade penalty on the assignment or test that is of concern, it must be dealt with using the “informal procedures”. Whereas, the formal procedures may be invoked when the grade penalty you see as deserved extends beyond the assignment or test to the overall grade for the course. However, each of…
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The Academic Dishonesty Redirect: Be Explicit, Know your Policies, Assess Authentically
[social_share/] [social-bio] At the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness, when faculty and instructors ask us about academic integrity, we will inevitably steer the conversation to three main values: the value of being very explicit with students about the rules you expect them to follow the value of understanding the rules of your home department or college as well as the university policy on academic misconduct, the value of designing assessment for authentic learning. Here’s a video that demonstrates this tendency quite nicely, if I do say so myself: And, for further evidence of our redirect, coming up on Monday, October 6 1:30 – 2:15 in the GMCTE Classroom, as…
- Academic Integrity, Assessment and Evaluation, Curriculum Development, General, Instructional / Course Design, Instructional Strategies, Program Evaluation
The Academic Honesty Bonus: Another Advantage of an Aligned Curriculum
[social-bio] In my role as a Curriculum Development Specialist, I get to talk with faculty about their programs and the many reasons to examine and renew curricula in higher education. In recent months, another advantage to an aligned curriculum has come to mind for me: academic honesty. I posit that the three following relationships hold generally true, and promote academic honesty among students. When faculty alert students to the progressive nature of the curriculum and convey to students how what they are learning now prepares them for, not only life after graduation but for future courses, students can better recognize the benefit of deep learning. For example, students can come…
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Academic Integrity and the Roles Students Play: The Student as Moral Agent
[social-bio] This is the final post in a series of four about metaphors revealed in students’ discussions of academic honesty and dishonesty. The four metaphors presented in this series do not represent mutually exclusive understandings and can overlap in their meanings. Not all students in my study expressed the same meanings or, if they did, did not express them in the same way. As McMillan and Cheney (1996) acknowledged, it can seem drastic to ascribe such power to metaphors but we rely so heavily on them that we often overlook their “powerful and practical role in our discourse” and that there is a “tendency to become what we say we…
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Academic Integrity and the Roles Students Play: The Student as Trainee
[social-bio] This is the third in a series of four posts about the ways students positioned themselves when discussing matters of academic honesty and dishonesty in my doctoral study. The metaphor of trainee described below, could also be conceived as the student as investor in or consumer of higher education. The overarching idea I gleaned is the student viewpoint that the desired outcome of a university education is gainful employment, where coursework is merely a means to that end, education an investment in the future, and enrolment in university a contractual relationship with an educational service provider. The Student as Trainee “This class that I’m taking is not relevant to…
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Academic Integrity and the Roles Students Play: The Student as Competitor
[social-bio] This is the second in a series of four posts where I present the metaphors I recognized as being in use in students’ discussions in my doctoral study of students’ understandings of academic honesty and dishonesty. These metaphors can be treated as lenses students appeared to use to see themselves in the university, to navigate their relation to others, and to interpret events. The Student as Competitor “It’s [good grades] like a carrot dangling in front of you. And everybody’s at a race and whether or not your carrot is big enough will tell you how far you’ll go.” “But you try to find every possible way,…