Instructors can encourage discussion about academic integrity in a variety of ways:
Discuss how scholarship gets created in your discipline.
Talk about how academic integrity will benefit them in the future, or how plagiarism or cheating can affect their future.
(ex: inability to get a reference from a professor for a job or co-op placement)
Search RetractionWatch.com for examples of academic misconduct in your discipline and use it as a discussion starter or case study.
Activities for teaching academic integrity:
Share a sample paper in Google Docs with your students that include correct and incorrect citations and ask your students to add comments to the document anywhere they may see an issue with the citations.
Implementing a short paraphrasing activity can improve students’ ability in paraphrasing (Greer, et al., 2012).
Ex: Conduct a pair and share where students look over each other’s paraphrasing of a short paragraph and give critiques/suggestions.
There is evidence that by including honour codes or pledges reduces academic dishonesty in courses. Moodle includes an option for instructors to include an academic integrity pledge at the start of a quiz (Tatum & Schwartz, 2017).
Sample pledge
For this exam, I make the following truthful statements:
I have not received, I have not given, nor will I give or receive, any assistance to another student taking this exam, including discussing the exam with students in another section of the course.
I will not use any non-instructor approved electronic device to assist me with this exam.
I will not plagiarize someone else’s work and turn it in as my own.
I understand that acts of academic dishonesty may be penalized to the full extent allowed by the University of Prince Edward Island, including receiving a failing grade for the course. I recognize that I am responsible for understanding UPEI’s Academic Regulation 20: Academic Integrity as they relate to this academic exercise.
References:
Greer, K., Swanberg, S., Hristova, M., Switzer, A. T., Daniel, D., & Perdue, S. W. (2012). Beyond the Web Tutorial: Development and Implementation of an Online, Self-Directed Academic Integrity Course at Oakland University. Journal of Academic Librarianship. 38(5). 251-259. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2012.06.010
Tatum, H. & Schwartz, B. M. (2017) Honor Codes: Evidence Based Strategies for Improving Academic Integrity. Theory Into Practice. 56(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2017.1308175