Academic integrity
Are you a professor or member of the teaching team interested in learning more about academic integrity at the University of Ottawa? Then this page is for you! Read on to find out what academic integrity is, why it’s so important, what causes it, how to incorporate it into your courses, and many other useful tips.
What is academic integrity?
Academic integrity is a fundamental principle upon which research and higher education institutions are built. It provides both a moral code of conduct and credibility to the various members of the academic community and a framework for learning, research and teaching activities that ensures that they are taken seriously and conducted with honesty, transparency, respect, and authenticity.
![A professor hands back assignments to students.]](/files/2024/01/29/istock-1614145164-1200x800.png "A professor hands back assignments to students.]")
In terms of teaching
Academic integrity allows faculty, teaching staff, and TAs to prevent academic fraud and misconduct, thereby promoting a fair and equitable evaluation of each student’s work. By upholding and communicating the importance of academic integrity, instructors can provide tailored feedback to meet the specific needs of each student and offer the necessary support for academic success.
![A student in the library is researching information in a book.]](/files/2024/01/29/istock-1359522622-1200x800.png "A student in the library is researching information in a book.]")
In terms of research
Academic integrity is also paramount, committing students and researchers to authentic work. Trust is established in a work, an author, and our university community through adherence to the code of conduct for academic integrity and its promotion.
Don’t forget the syllabus!
According to a Senate committee decision in 2021, article A-2.4 states that a reference to the regulation on academic misconduct is a mandatory component of any course syllabus.
What are the causes of academic misconduct?
There are many reasons for academic misconduct! Take a few minutes to discover the main factors that can influence student academic misconduct and the potential causes of these behaviours. As you learn about these factors and causes, consider how you might create policies, activities, or assessments that can help reduce academic misconduct in your courses.
References
This list of reasons for academic misconduct was created and synthesized from research by Brimble (2016), Choo and Tan (2008), Park (2010), Eaton (2019), and the Taylor Institute at the University of Calgary.
Misunderstanding of academic policies
While general information on academic misconduct can be found in the course syllabus, students may have difficulty knowing how to apply the regulations when they are completing assignments in your course. Each professor may have different expectations regarding citations, paraphrasing, incorporating references, and utilizing artificial intelligence tools. As a result, without clear and explicit expectations, students may find it challenging to understand what is and is not allowed within the course, increasing the chances of academic misconduct. In this case, misuse of tools and references may be unintentional.
Pressure to succeed
Pressure to succeed can come from parents, employers, colleagues, a competitive and stressful learning environment, or from the students themselves. Pressure to succeed, whether to gain admission to another program, to obtain or maintain a scholarship, or simply to graduate, is a factor that can lead to academic misconduct, especially when the value and weight of an assessment is high. In such circumstances, the pressure can cause students to view success as a necessity and academic misconduct as their only option.
Temptation and opportunity
If your course does not explicitly address academic misconduct, plagiarism, or academic fraud and the consequences of these behaviours, students may perceive these behaviours as commonplace. They might also believe that others in the course are engaging in such behaviours (without penalty) and view academic misconduct as an easier option. Similarly, if the course’s assessments seem unachievable or if the exam has trick questions or uses deceptive or misleading techniques, engaging in academic misconduct may be tempting to students because the benefits (succeeding) appear to outweigh the possible costs and risks.
Time management and lack of flexibility
While we would like students’ academic activities to be their priority, the reality is many students have commitments outside of their academic life (e.g., work, family, religious and social obligations, and other extracurricular activities). When these commitments overlap or interfere with academic activities, managing time and priorities (studies, finances, family, etc.) becomes difficult. Faced with a lack of time and flexibility in submitting assignments, students may feel that academic misconduct is the only way to get the work done on time.
Perceived lack of cohesion, alignment, and relevance
If assessments are to measure the knowledge and skills students have learned in a course but the exam is asking questions about topics they haven’t been introduced to yet, there is a lack of cohesion or alignment which frustrates students and could lead to academic misconduct. In the same way, if students do not understand the value of a task or assessment (why they’re doing it) within a course and program, it may be difficult for them to figure out why it’s important and to find the motivation to complete it. More specifically, if the course content appears irrelevant to their job or future goals, or if the value of the task they are required to complete is unclear, academic misconduct may be perceived as an easier alternative.
Feelings of stress
In addition to the pressures mentioned earlier, students may also feel stressed (due to health, financial, social reasons, etc.) which can influence their decision to engage in academic misconduct. These personal stressors can spill over into students’ academic lives and become a significant factor leading to academic misconduct.
How do you address academic integrity in your courses?
To create a culture of honesty and responsibility, it is necessary to educate your students about academic integrity and reflect on the importance you attribute to it in your courses. Starting right at the course design stage, academic integrity can influence all your decisions, including how you structure your course, organize your lessons, and how you select and then design your evaluations (both formative and summative).
Evaluation FOR learning
An evaluation is considered “formative” when the mark, grade or result of the assessment does not contribute towards the student’s final grade or success within the course. Formative assessments are used to informally support, improve, and verify student learning by enabling students to apply what they are learning, practice before a summative evaluation, and receive feedback to help them improve.
Evaluation OF learning
Summative evaluations, marked by a professor or a teaching team member, are assigned a grade, score or result that will influence the student’s overall success in the course. Summative tasks are used to evaluate what students have learned.
Addressing academic integrity in 5 steps
This is the time to look at your course holistically before you start putting it all together to examine the relevance and alignment of its components (to learn more about alignment, keep reading).
Action item
Tip
This is the time to actively plan your course by selecting the assessments students will complete throughout the term.
Action item
Choose assessments for the course while considering the factors surrounding the assigned work (time allotted to complete the assignment, weight of the assessment, number of competing assessments, etc.). These factors greatly influence the likelihood of cheating on an evaluation. Whenever possible, consider favouring assessment tasks that:
- are completed in class
- are personalized and unique (to the student and/or the course)
- include an oral component or interview
- involve reflection on a personal or practical experience
Tip
Consider incorporating one of the following types of assessments into your course. Research suggests that these are less likely to result in academic misconduct:
- In-class exam
- Critique/Commentary
- Journal entry/Logbook
- Group work
- Case study
- Poster fair
- Annotated bibliography
- Concept map
- Discussion (forum)
- Oral presentation
- Debate
- Letter/Opinion piece
- Producing a resource (infographic, video, podcast, brochure, etc.)
- Grant application
- Memo (policy/practice)
This is the time to concretely develop the assessment tasks you will use to measure students’ learning.
Action items
Create assessments that target higher-order thinking skills (i.e., application, analysis, evaluation, and creation skills), making sure to pay attention to the design of your questions. Avoid misleading or trick questions. Ask questions that require answers not easily generated by an artificial intelligence tool! In addition to being clear, aim for questions that are creative and personalized to the course.
Tips
Foster students’ self-motivation (a factor that reduces academic misconduct!). To do this:
Design assessments that offer students choices in topics and/or work format
Include assessment questions that ask students to connect to their interests and personal experiences
Incorporate analogies and multimedia elements into your exam questions – these add specificity to your exams (making it harder to cheat)!
This is the time to initiate discussions about academic integrity with your students, clarify the objectives and expectations of the assessment task, and explain how to complete the assignment.
Action items
Discuss academic integrity with your students in light of the assessment task they will be completing. Go over the process to complete the work and what they are permitted to use:
How should they indicate when they paraphrase? How do you want them to incorporate citations?
What websites, technology, and search engines can they access?
Clarify expectations and remind them of the importance of academic integrity in their discipline and professional career.
Tips
Consider involving students in the evaluation process itself. This empowers them and cultivates a desire for honesty: a winning strategy for reducing the likelihood of academic misconduct! Among other things, you could:
Establish an academic integrity agreement with students that they can then validate and sign
Co-construct an assessment rubric or brainstorm the important criteria with students to clarify what is allowed in the assignment and specify all of its components
Explain the value of the evaluation task to be performed, the competencies and skills it seeks to develop, and the importance of being able to perform such work with integrity within one’s field of study and future employment.
This is the time to implement your assessment activities and engage students in their tasks.
Action items
Present the assessment to the students and then make yourself available. Research shows that when faculty (professors, teaching assistants, etc.) remain available during an assessment and in the weeks leading up to an assignment, there is less likelihood of cheating and academic misconduct. To implement monitoring or plagiarism detection technologies in assessments, be sure to also browse the Academic Integrity page (Ouriginal and Respondus).
Tip
On the day of the assessment, give final reminders to students. Clarify final details and focus on the principle of academic integrity one last time, then wish them luck: it’s their turn to work!
Think you’ve detected academic misconduct? What should you do?
See the Procedures section of the Academic Integrity and Academic Misconduct page of the University of Ottawa for the protocols to follow.
So what does academic integrity mean?
Academic integrity means upholding the values of honesty and transparency in academic work, which includes learning, research and teaching activities. Academic integrity is a moral and ethical code of conduct that lies at the heart of the university community.
From the faculty and teaching staff perspective
Academic integrity is a set of core values (honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage [International Centre for Academic Integrity, 2021]) that should be communicated to students regarding the academic work and activities conducted in courses. Sharing the importance of academic integrity not only supports the creation of a conscientious learning environment, it also helps to ensure that the students enrolled in your courses are the real authors of their work, that they have provided references, that they have worked ethically as a group, and that they have produced authentic and original work.
From the student perspective
Academic integrity acts as a framework of action that outlines the behaviours and rules that must be followed in order to conduct student coursework, research, and academic activities honestly. More concretely, this may mean following specific guidelines for the use of citations and references, adhering to standards for the use and reuse of sources, or following rules for collaborative work with peers.
Want to explore further?
The following resources are divided into categories to help you focus in on what you would like to explore in more detail.
University regulations and information
To learn more about academic integrity as well as university regulations on academic misconduct, we recommend you visit the following pages:
-
Academic Integrity (Office of the Provost and Vice-President of Academic Affairs, uOttawa)
Prevention strategies and evaluation
To learn more about the alignment of the different components of your course (learning outcomes, activities, assessments) and to get additional ideas for your evaluation strategies, see the following pages:
-
Constructive Alignment [link to come, TLSS]
-
Evaluation [link to come, TLSS]
To learn more about artificial intelligence in higher education and explore avenues for starting a discussion on the topic in your courses, see:
-
Artificial Intelligence in Teaching and Learning (TLSS, uOttawa)
-
Berdahl, L. & Bens, S. (2023). Academic integrity in the age of ChatGPT, University Affairs, June 16.
-
ICAI-Canada Statement on Artificial Intelligence and Academic Integrity. June 14, 2023
To discover even more tips and strategies for preventing academic misconduct, check out the following resources:
-
Academic Integrity Working Group. (2020). Guide: Academic integrity toolkit for course instructors. Dalhousie University.
-
Berdahl, L. & Bens, S. (2023). Designing courses that promote academic integrity, University Affairs, June 23.
-
Eaton, S. E. (2024). Decolonizing academic integrity: knowledge caretaking as ethical practice. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1–16.
-
Eaton, S. E. (2022). New priorities for academic integrity: equity, diversity, inclusion, decolonization and Indigenization. International Journal of Educational Integrity 18, 10.
-
Eaton, S. E. & Christensen Hughes, J. (2022). Academic Integrity in Canada: Historical Perspectives and Current Trends. Springer.
-
Eaton, S. (2019). 25 Strategies to prevent plagiarism. Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning.
-
Flynn, A. & Kerr, J. (2020). Remote teaching: a practical guide with tools, tips, and techniques. Open Library/Pressbooks.
-
Gladue, K., Poitras Pratt, Y. (2024). The Integrity of Good Relations: Indigenous Approaches to Respect, Relationality, and Reciprocity in Higher Learning. In: Eaton, S.E. (eds) Second Handbook of Academic Integrity. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham.
-
Teaching and Learning Services. (2022). Academic integrity resources. Carleton University.
-
Universal Design: Course Design. Centre for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo
-
The University of Waterloo uses a system of “slip days” (see the Flexibility section): Provide a couple of “slip days” for assignments which allow students the ability to submit an assignment after the due date without penalty. Students chose which assignments they will apply their slip or grace days to. For group assignments, pushing an assignment deadline back by one day costs each person in the group one of their slip days. If one or more group members don’t have enough slip days left, then the group can’t slip.
-
Causes of cheating
To learn more about the causes of cheating and the reasons that lead to academic misconduct among students, see the following references and studies:
-
Berdahl, L. & Bens, S. (2023). Students and academic misconduct: why it happens and possible solutions, University Affairs, June 8.
-
Brimble, M. (2016). Why students cheat: an exploration of the motivators of student academic dishonesty in higher education. In T. Bretag (Ed.), Handbook of academic integrity (pp. 363–382). Springer Singapore.
-
Choo, F. & Tan, K. (2008). The effect of fraud triangle factors on students‘ cheating behaviors. In B. N. Schartz & A. H. Catanach, (Eds.), Advances in accounting education (vol. 9) (pp. 205–220). Emerald.
-
Hillman, D. (2020). Promoting online assessment integrity FAQ. Boston University.
-
International Centre for Academic Integrity. (2021). Fundamental Values of Academic Integrity (3rd edition). ICAI.
-
Lang, J. (2013). Cheating lessons. Harvard.
-
Park, C. (2003). In other (people’s) words: Plagiarism by university students-literature and lessons, Assessment & evaluation in higher education, 28(5), 471–488.
-
Roussel, C. (2013). L’intégrité académique : ça s’apprend!, Le tableau, 2(2).
Do you need additional support?
Did you find this content relevant?
Please take a moment to rate our webpage. Your feedback is valuable to us!