How to Handle Cases of (Potential) Academic Integrity Violations

In accordance with the AUC’s efforts to promote a culture of academic integrity on campus, the ALA and the Core Curriculum Office strictly enforce the academic integrity principles found in AUC’s Code of Academic Integrity. Faculty are expected to promote the highest standards of academic and ethical integrity, ensure that students are doing their own work; and require all students to use Turnitin.com for all drafts of major assignments.

General Policy

For many students, particularly first-semester students, the concepts and standards of Academic Integrity at AUC can be new and difficult to learn. Thus, while maintaining high standards, we must maintain a “learning-opportunity” mindset while working with students on this issue, and be sure to teach the values and strategies associated with academic integrity.

Thus, for students in their first semester (and sometimes into the second semester), we generally recommend that potential academic integrity incidents be dealt with mostly as "teaching moments" with minimal consequence to their course grade. However, for students further along in their studies, or for second or more egregious offenses, consequences should correspondingly be greater.

Determining the Seriousness or Type of Case

Academic integrity offenses typically fall into three major categories. This first category is applicable only for first-, and sometimes second-semester students. In the ELI, due to students often being even more inexperienced with Academic Integrity standards, they have some different boundaries and labels for some of these violations.

Type 0: Very Minor/Unintentional Violations

These offenses might be technical violations, but are slight, and understandably a part of learning. For example:

• sloppy paraphrasing

• citing as a paraphrase when it was more of a quote

• putting a source in the references page, and maybe even citing it in the paper, but failing to cite somewhere else in the paper

• using an idea from a class discussion in a paper, but not citing the source

• positively collaborating with peers, but using too many of the peers’ ideas in the student’s paper
  
  

In general, most faculty use such incidents to explain why there is a problem, how to fix it, and nothing more. Such offenses are handled entirely between the student and faculty member and usually with no consequence. Also, no report is filed with the Academic Integrity Committee (AIC). These offenses are a regular part of teaching first-semester and sometimes second-semester students.

Type 1: Minor Violations (on the official AUC sanctions matrix, this covers level 1 and 2 violations)

These violations become a bit more difficult to define, because both intent and academic experience come more into consideration. What might be unintentional due to limited experience in the first semester could be quite different by the fourth semester.  In general though, these offenses are more than just the slight mistakes that are an early part of learning academic integrity. They are moderately more serious or show more intent. This is when a student "probably should have known better."  While such incidents should still be used as learning opportunities, a faculty member might include some additional consequences, such as a grade penalty on the assignment, needing to re-do the assignment, needing to write a reflection paper, etc.

That said, these incidents are not egregious cheating, or major violations of academic integrity. Depending on the level of academic experience, this might include using an uncited/unreferenced source throughout a paper, closely following the outline of a friend’s paper, plagiarizing a paragraph of a paper, etc. 

These incidents need to be reported to the Academic Integrity Committee (AIC). For first and second semester students, the AIC usually uses the student's freshmen status as a mitigating factor. However, if the student previously had a violation in another class, or is further along in their studies at AUC, then the AIC will not mitigate the sanction.

Type 2: More Serious or Repeat Violations (on the official AUC sanctions matrix, this covers level 3-4 violations)

This is a more serious category and would include incidents like:

• buying papers online

• having another person complete their assignment for them

• gaining access to and using exam material prior to an exam

• copying or significantly copying papers of other students

• cheating and trying to cover it up (like double translating papers)

• an intentional violation after having been specifically warned by the faculty member

• it could also be more moderate violations, but ones committed by students further along in their studies who have had plenty of opportunities to learn academic integrity standards.

• Improper use of AI

Because the violations are more serious, the consequences now become more serious.  For example, a faculty member may assign a failing grade on the assignment, may assign a grade reduction in the course, or maybe even give the student an F for the course. Additionally, after a faculty member has reported, as required, such a case to the AIC, the AIC will also likely assign additional sanctions assuming the student is indeed found guilty of the violation.

The Role of the AIC

The Academic Integrity Committee is the official committee at AUC that records academic integrity violations and hears Academic Integrity cases. The committee cares about a student's growth, learning and development, and their purpose is to ensure there is a system to institutionally support students' learning to abide by academic integrity principles. For many minor offenses, For minor and moderate offenses, students are often given a warning and have to complete a few-hour-long academic integrity course, and might have some hours of community service. In other words, consequences are mostly educational, and for most cases, the committee assumes that most consequences are handled within the classroom.

That said, it is important that incidents are reported to the AIC. Sadly, there are some students who are chronic violators, who only receive verbal warnings course after course after course, but the dots are never connected. This is why it is important to report even minor violations to the AIC.

Specific Steps for Handling an Academic Integrity Incident

The first step is for the faculty member to try to determine if the student has indeed committed a violation so as to avoid unsupported accusations against students.  Depending on the type of violation, this might include a careful review of the turnitin.com report or a comparison with prior drafts or other writing assignments. It is also generally advisable for the faculty member to meet with the student as part of trying to determine if the student has indeed committed a violation, although such a meeting can be difficult to do with assignments submitted at the end of a semester.

If evidence indicates that a violation has occurred, then the faculty member should further discuss the situation with the student as part of the learning process. In order for it to be a learning opportunity, the student needs to participate in that learning, which generally means that they admit to their mistakes. If a student does not acknowledge their wrongdoing in the face of clear evidence, and does not participate in the attempts to make it a learning opportunity, then the incident generally escalates to a higher level case.

For all violations, the faculty member should always include the following two components.

• Teaching-Education: (essential)  Faculty need to help students learn academic integrity, and when there is a violation, it provides an opportune time to help students learn and grow in this area. Thus, faculty should clearly explain what academic integrity violation has been committed, why it is considered wrong, and how to avoid it in the future. Many of our students do not come from an educational background where academic integrity is taught.

• Warning: (essential) The faculty member should clearly warn about the potential serious consequences if the student were to have any additional academic integrity violations at the university in the future.
  
  

For Type 1+ violations you need to also:

• Notify: The student should be notified that an Academic Integrity Incident Report is being filed with the AIC. This may cause the student stress, and thus if it is a minor offense, then it is okay to inform them that consequences are usually educational for minor, first-time offenses. When you notify the student you should include the reasons for the case being filed and the basic evidence for the case. However, confidential evidence, including evidence that might reveal the names of other students involved, does not need to be shared with the student. The student should also be notified that he/she is allowed to appeal the case to the Chair at this point.
  
  

For Type 1+ violations, you may want to also consider the following additional components.

• A Penalty: A penalty, if any, needs to be decided and communicated to the student.

• For some Type 1 violations, depending on the nature of the infraction and the assignment, some faculty members may choose to give a small penalty (such as a 10% reduction on the assignment). The penalty, however, should not be steep, generally should not cause the student to fail, and should not go against the general principle of a first offense being a learning opportunity.

• For Type 2 violations, the consequences should be more serious. You need to decide what these will be.  Consequences may range from a minimum of failing the assignment to a maximum of failing the course.

• Re-doing: Faculty members may make the student redo the assignment or at least fix the part of the assignment where there was plagiarism or some other form of academic integrity violation. This demonstrates that the student understands the problem, and knows how to avoid it in the future. Many faculty members will not give a grade on the assignment until this redone assignment is completed.

• Reflection: Some faculty members will have their students write a short reflection paper acknowledging where they made their mistake, why, and how they will avoid doing so in the future.

Submitting an Incident Report to the AIC (For Type 1+ Offenses)

1. All evidence and supporting documents need to be gathered (turnitin.com reports, samples of student writing, etc.). This step often includes meeting with the student as part of the fact-finding process.  Helpful suggestions on how to prepare the documents/evidence are in the next section below.

2. You will need to complete an online "Incident Report" form in the following step, but before that is submitted, In the core we recommend that you have your Department Chair review the content of the report, both your description of the incident as well as your evidence.  The Chair will generally use her/his experience with the AIC to give feedback on the content and/or will simply approve the information for submission.

3. Once you have made any updates to your report and have the approval of the Chair, then you officially submit the incident report using the Incident Report Link. This report should be filled within ten working days of discovering the offense. Note: When the AIC hears a case, they usually report back to the faculty member on the outcome of the hearing.
   
   

Preparing evidence to an academic integrity incident report

When submitting academic integrity incident reports, faculty members would have one chance to upload valid documents/evidence to support their cases. As the academic integrity committee dismisses allegations lacking sufficient evidence, reporting faculty should be made aware of what constitutes sufficient evidence. Therefore, the Academic Integrity Office and Committee have shared below some recommendations on how to prepare the evidence for different violations. For straightforward plagiarism allegations, a faculty should attach the Turnitin similarity report when filing the case. As for other types of violations, such as contract cheating or improper usage of Artificial Intelligence tools, it is recommended to include students’ writing samples as evidence. Writing samples collected at the beginning of the semester are used as a baseline for students’ writing capabilities. In addition, an oral interview summary is essential in some cases to further assess students’ knowledge of the content of the work submitted. According to AUC’s Council on Academic Integrity, it is advised to have a colleague attend the interview with the student.