Ten Principles of Academic Integrity for Faculty (2017)
by Donald L. McCabe and Gary Pavela
Faculty Obligations (taken from the Bulletin)
The Honor Code obliges instructors:
- To monitor and design exams and assignments so that honest students
will not be disadvantaged by other students who might choose to cheat
if given the opportunity.
- To report circumstances that may compromise academic honesty, such as inattentive proctoring or premature posting of answers.
- To follow all published procedures regarding cases of academic misconduct.
- To report any observed breaches of this Honor Code and academic honesty.
Best Practices for Assignments
- Make your expectations about collaboration very clear. Although you might ask students not to collaborate, when an assignment is completed outside of the class, there is a great deal of temptation for students to, at the very least, consult a classmate. In fact, assignments outside the classroom should encourage collaboration as this is a great mechanism to make students think more deeply about the material.
- Outside assignments should be used as lower stakes formative assessments, rather than as high-stakes summative assessments.
- Design assignments that discourage cheating such as items that require critical analysis.
- Use the originality check imbedded in D2L. Make sure your students know you are doing this. In fact, you can even set it up so that they can check their own report prior to turning in the final copy. It puts the responsibility on the student. If you do this, however, you need to set it up to allow overwriting, otherwise their second draft may turn up as plagiarized from themselves.
Best Practices for Exams
- For multiple choice exams, have more than one version. These should include not only scrambled questions but scrambled answers as well.
- Do not re-use questions on exams unless you are absolutely certain they have not been seen by a portion of the class (e.g. online quizzes, fraternity and sorority files, etc).
- Include the Honor Pledge at the top of each exam for students to sign. (Marquette Honor Pledge example)
- Monitor students at all times during exams/tests/quizzes.
- For every additional 40–50 students, you should have an additional proctor in the room.
- Have students place phones/watches in bags and put bags across the room during exams/tests/quizzes when feasible.
- Explain your rules to students, both prior to the exam day and on the exam day. For example, it is best to state that there are no bathroom breaks (unless there is a medical excuse), no water bottles, no electronics, no hats, etc., allowed during exams.
Language for Your Syllabus
Your syllabus should always contain a statement about academic honesty. Below is an example of how this might be worded. Below the general statement you could put a list of instances of academic dishonesty that might be most relevant to your course and assignments such as cutting and pasting from the Internet, copying another student's computer code, signing in for another student who is missing class, etc.
Sample:
Academic Honesty
In the spring of 2006 the university approved an Academic Honesty Policy that is now applicable to all courses (https://bulletin.marquette.edu/undergrad/academicregulations/#academichonestypolicy). The Bulletin serves, in effect, as the University’s contract with its students. Accordingly, we are obligated to adhere to the protocol described in this new policy. Acts of academic dishonesty may include, but are not limited, to the following:
- Copying material from a Web page and submitting it as one’s own work.
- Quoting extensively from a document without making proper references to the source.
- Copying answers from the quiz or examination paper of another student.
- Plagiarizing (submitting the work of another as one’s own ideas) or falsifying materials or information used in the completion of any assignment, which is graded or evaluated as the student’s individual effort.
- Intentionally interfering with any person’s scholastic work (e.g., by damaging or stealing laboratory experiments, computer files or library materials).
- Submitting the same work for more than one course without the consent of the instructors of each course in which the work is submitted.
- Using another student’s clicker in class or handing your clicker to another student to have them answer for you.
