Principle 5

Consider various ways to foreground and address academic integrity.

Implications and Suggestions for Instructors

  • Consider adaptations to assessments where possible to minimize both student desperation and opportunity. For example, consider lower weighting or regular mini-quizzes on foundational factual knowledge (i.e., that which can be looked up easily) and reserving greater weight for multi-phase scaffolded and personalized assignments
  • Carefully weigh the pros and cons of using remote proctoring software such as Proctorio, in light of practical and ethical concerns such as hardware accessibility and student privacy.
  • Explicitly discuss and model how academic integrity is a crucial part of participating in an academic/scholarly community aimed at knowledge creation, including how you manifest integrity in your own work and your expectations for them.
  • Form a purposeful statement of expectations around academic integrity in an online space, specific to the course, presented to students in the course syllabus at the beginning, and, ideally, discussed with them in the first sessions of the course.
  • Ask students to engage with the syllabus statement about academic integrity and commit to its principles. Revisit the statement throughout the course. Keep integrity top of mind by including a brief question on each assignment asking students to reflect on how it relates to academic integrity.
  • Embed assessments of meta-cognition, which help students reflect on how they know what they know, while simultaneously revealing insufficiencies. Examples include exam wrappers and (group) oral exams, both of which have empirical support and can be adapted for medium-large classes.
  • Consider carefully the implementation and use of academic misconduct detection mechanisms in online assessments. Seek clarity on Departmental/Faculty policy and procedures on reporting academic misconduct.
  • See https://wiki.ubc.ca/Learning_Commons:Faculty_Resources/Academic_Integrity for more information.
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This work is adapted from “Guiding Principles for Fall 2020 Course Adaptations” and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.