The Harvard College Honor code declares that we “hold honesty as the foundation of our community.” As you enter this academic community, please write a couple of paragraphs in which you reflect on a time when you had to make a choice about whether to act with integrity and honesty. What in that experience do you think will help you uphold the values of the Honor Code as you read, write, study, and learn at Harvard?
In addition, please write a few sentences in response to the following question (your answer may be helpful to your instructors and advisors when they talk with you during the semester): What might you find new or confusing or challenging about these academic expectations?
Find at the Harvard Website
This Harvard site has sample materials for creating a culture of integrity and creating policies and activities that specifically show students the differences between good collaboration and cheating.
Recommendations from Berkeley's Academic Senate:
Design assessments to reduce the incentives for misconduct and perceptions of misconduct
The most effective way to safeguard academic integrity is to deploy forms of assessment that are less susceptible to cheating than written exams: oral exams, papers, group projects, poster sessions, discussion boards, etc. If written exams must be administered, there are ways to discourage, if not eliminate, cheating and to mitigate its effects on other students. This section presents some general principles; Part III discusses a variety of specific exam formats and how they reduce the incentives and opportunities for cheating.
Do not curve exams. The perception that others in a class are benefiting from misconduct can undermine the culture of integrity that allows a fair exam process, creating an incentive for misconduct. It is important for students to perceive that they will not be disadvantaged by the misconduct of other students, a problem that can be exacerbated by grading on a strict curve. In the absence of a curve, students who cheat may still get A’s, but their “success” will not reduce the chances for other students to get A’s as well.
Make exams open-book, so that students who consult notes and books do not gain an unfair advantage over students who adhere to closed-book rules.
Schedule multiple, short, low-stakes tests, rather than one or two lengthy, high-stakes exams. Students may be less tempted to cheat if the stakes of the exam are relatively low and less able to cheat if the exams are of short duration. In addition, this approach is generally recognized as superior for promoting learning and retention.
Formulate questions that require more than simple memorization of basic facts. Multiple-choice, true-or-false, and fill-in-the blanks questions that have a single, short, correct answer are the most susceptible to cheating, as students can quickly look up answers online and/or share answers with other students in the class. Such questions also test a relatively limited understanding of course content. By contrast, more complex questions that require a deeper understanding and mastery of course concepts do not lend themselves as easily to cheating since there is no single, simple, correct answer. Examples of such questions include requiring students to resolve complex problems, respond to fictional scenarios, or present and defend a subjective position. This approach is not only better at preventing cheating, but also promotes a higher form of learning than rote memorization.
Use randomized oral exams to ensure that the work that students have submitted is truly their own. Prior to the examination, a random set of integers can be generated that are then matched to an alphabetized list of students from the course. After the exam and prior to assigning final grades, all of the previously selected students may be questioned about their solutions to the exam. For this process to be utilized, it should:
Be announced to students sufficiently far in advance of the examination for students to self-identify to DSP and seek accommodations from that office.
Make clear the consequences for a student who fails to appear for the oral examination.
Exhibit no bias and should be administered in such a manner as to be defendable to other instructors.
Instructors should clearly explain the format of exams to students well in advance. One aim is to reduce the anxiety many students are feeling about the uncertainty of how remote exams are going to work. Keep in mind that remote exams are not only unfamiliar but also likely inconsistent across different classes.
Some of our recommendations involve using Question Banks.
The different exam formats discussed below are designed to be robust vis-à-vis technological glitches, to minimize opportunities for academic misconduct, and, in many cases, to assess students’ deeper understanding of the course content, as opposed to rote memorization.
Some considerations in designing these exams include:
Time limits: the more limited the time, the less a student can rely on searching through materials and the more they will need to study in advance in order to complete the exam.
Course material: to deter students from turning to Google or outside sources or assistance, write questions that are closely and specifically connected to course content (e.g., compare the evidence used by Author A and Author Z; apply concept B to the data presented in article Y). This can also be done in auto-gradable questions (multiple choice. T/F, etc.) by constructing scenarios to which students must apply knowledge derived from course lectures and readings.
Embedded Conceptual Assessment: in seeking to assess students’ ability to use certain concepts or analytical skills from the class, an instructor could provide a previously unseen document, source, dataset, etc., and ask how it could be used to support or contradict arguments made by Scholar C and Scholar X.
Applied Questions: writing questions centered on fictional scenarios or actors provides a mechanism to assess how deeply students understand specific ideas while limiting the ability of students to turn to the internet for answers. Examples might include wholly or partially invented chemical compounds, math formulae, plants, locations, or characters.
Randomized Exams: The order of exam questions can be randomized, more than one version of an exam can be used with different questions or question organization, or exams can use various combinations of both.
The platform Canvas allows instructors to build multiple Question Banks.
’ can be utilized for the same exam to divide sections of the test. Both the answers and question order can be randomized in Canvas. A large Question Bank allows for each student to receive a randomized subset of questions from the bank, so that every student is receiving a different test.
Canvas supports setting a time limit for an assignment. It also makes it possible to input extensions for students who receive accommodations. Students in other time zones can be individually assigned to a more favorable time slot.
When using timed examinations, give a “starting window” of at least 15 minutes so that students do not need to rush to take advantage of the full time allotted to them. For large courses, a 15-minute starting window will also alleviate potential sources of instability on web services.
Canvas allows instructors to easily randomize all question types as well as the answer order for multiple-choice questions. To randomize answers, select ‘Shuffle Answers’ in the Quiz details.
Please see Berkley's site for more information.