We know there are three evidence-based practices that promote academic integrity and prevent academic misconduct when instructors use them:
- Discuss Purpose with Students: Ask – why are you here? Invite students into a value-based or discipline-based discussion about their academics and future goals. Help them discover and articulate their purpose(s) for learning with us;
- Define: Set shared expectations. Pre-define what you consider to be academic misconduct by reviewing and discussing it with your students, and;
- Respond & Report: Follow university policy and ideally report misconduct when you find your student responsible for an incident.
Questions about how to do those things?
Contact academicintegrity@boisestate.edu for pre-made class activities to suit these exact needs. You might offer them in class, for homework, or for extra credit. You can also request a classroom visit from the Academic Integrity Program Director.
Bibliography & Notes:
- Bretag, T., Harper, R., Burton, M., Ellis, C., Newton, P., Rozenberg, P., Saddiqui, S., & van Haeringen, K. (2019). Contract cheating in Australian higher education: A comparison of non-university higher education providers and universities. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 45(1), 125-139.
- Broeckelman-Post, Melissa A. (2008). Faculty and student classroom influences on academic dishonesty. IEEE Transactions on Education, 51 (2), 206-211. In this article, you can read test-design strategies that reduce opportunity to cheat, and therefore promote academic integrity. They’re also inside the “For Online Classes” graphic, above.
- Craig, P. A., Federici, E., & Buehler, M. A. (2010). Instructing students in academic integrity. Journal of College Science Teaching, 40(2), 50–55. Here you can read about how low-stakes writing, scaffolding, and peer review can all help students learn well while managing pressures like time, which can set the stage for academic misconduct behaviors.
- Linder, S.P., Abbott, D., & Fromberger, M.J. (2006). An instructional scaffolding approach to teaching software design. Consortium for Computer Sciences in Colleges, 21(6), 238-250.
- McCabe, D. L., Butterfield, K. D. & Treviño, L. K. (2012). Cheating in college: Why students do it and what educators can do about it. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Read about how faculty and students often have different unspoken ideas of what cheating and academic misconduct really are. Then consider clarifying your expectations and aligning students’ understanding with yours.
- McCabe, D.L., Trevino, L.K., & Butterfield, K.D. (2001). Cheating in academic institutions: A decade of research. Ethics & Behavior, 11(3), 219-232.
- Nelson, L.P., Nelson, R.K., Tichenor, L. (2013). Understanding today’s students: Entry-Level science student involvement in academic dishonesty. Journal of College Science Teaching, 42(3), 52-57. Here you can read about how role modeling academic integrity by citing all source material in worksheets, slides, exams, etc helps students.
- Passow, H. J., Mayhew, M. J., Finelli, C. J., Harding, T. S., & Carpenter, D. D. (2006). Factors influencing engineering students’ decisions to cheat by type of assessment. Research in Higher Education, 47(6), 643-684.
- Razek, N. (2014). Academic integrity: A Saudi student perspective. Academy of Educational Leadership Journal, 18(1), 143-154.
- Turner, C. E. (2005). A new honesty for a new game: Distinguishing cheating from learning in a web-based testing environment. Journal of Political Science Education, 1, 163–174.
- Yeo, S. (2007). First-year university science and engineering students’ understanding of plagiarism. Higher Education Research & Development, 26(2), 199–216.
Thanks
The Office of the Dean of Students would like to thank the CTL/IDEA Shop and eCampus Instructional Designers for providing comments on this document, and eCampus Instructional Designers for co-developing the document, “Infusing Academic Integrity Into Your Online Course.”