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Instructors and Your Students: Would a Quick-Guide to Navigating Potential Academic Misconduct Help You?

Student at a laptop, studying.

Hello from your Academic Integrity Program Director, Sarah Wilson!

With finals right around the corner, students may be feeling crunched for time, stressed by their academic/ work/ family obligations, or at a loss for where to get tutoring help if they find they need it. We know the BEST support for students right now is problem-solving information and practice—like links to our campus’ tutor-booking sites, mini-discussions in class about how to get help, print resources like APA format guides, and maybe even a few minutes dedicated to time management strategies with Google Calendar.

Unfortunately and despite problem-solving supports, some students will participate in cheating, plagiarizing, or other academic misconduct behaviors this winter. As an instructor, this can be overwhelming because academic misconduct is a relatively small part of any teacher’s job, and it’s also an impactful and important one. As a result, I’ve created and attached two guides to help you and help your students:

As a former teacher and our Academic Integrity Program Director, I know a few other things are also important to remember:

  1. Academic misconduct is a behavior, not a person.
  2. People learn by doing, so when a student has not done the coursework experience, the problem is that they are not yet learning.
  3. A professor’s goal in handling potential misconduct, then, is to:
    1. Ask, ‘what did this student demonstrate they learned?’
      •  Any final grades or syllabus-supported grading sanctions reflect an instructor’s assessment of this question.
    2. Follow our due process steps so that you and your student have a clear path forward.
    3. Report any findings of ‘responsibility’ to the Academic Integrity Program for due-process incident management and incident-conclusion.

If you want more details than the process guides give, you can also visit our Academic Integrity Program website! Thank you!