Academic Integrity

Lead:
Laura Patterson, Associate Professor of Teaching, School of Engineering

Members:
Amanda Brobbel, Senior Manager, Writing and Language Learning Services
Anita Chaudhuri, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Department of English and Cultural Studies
Hansika Dadlani, Graduate Student Representative
Tanya Forneris, Interim Academic Lead, Centre for Teaching and Learning
Sandy Hilton, Associate Professor of Teaching, Faculty of Management
Shirley Hutchinson, Lecturer, Department of Psychology
Yves Lucet, Professor, Department of Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics
Lisvet Parra, Undergraduate Student Representative
Sarin Pokhrel, Graduate Student Representative
Laura Prada, Office of the Provost and Vice-President Academic
Jaclyn Stewart, Deputy Academic Director, Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology, Vancouver campus
Elaine Teng, Graduate Student, Vancouver campus
Abid Wahab, Undergraduate Student Representative

Executive Sponsor:
Heather Berringer, Chief Librarian & Associate Provost, Learning Services

Recommendation:

Evaluate and update relevant academic integrity regulation(s) and processes, and develop and implement campus-wide initiatives to support them.

Actions:

1. Create permanent administrative positions in academic integrity building towards a UBC office of academic integrity so that this work is a significant part, if not the whole, of their portfolio.
2. Create and support, as relevant, an Academic Integrity Advisory Committee, to continue to inform and direct a long-term strategy on academic integrity and complete the initiatives hereby listed.
3. Update the Academic Honesty and Standards regulation in the academic calendar to ensure student and faculty expectations are clear, as well as the misconduct processes.
   • Meaningfully engage with students to ensure clarity of concepts and processes.
     Integrate the most recent literature and best practices in the field.
   • Ensure processes are underlined by principles of equity and inclusion as well as other UBC
     principles.
   • This is a high priority because all discussions and activities should be based on this language
   • Work with the Vancouver campus towards alignment in regulation, as relevant and possible.
4. Develop a plan to emphasize the academic integrity regulations among students, upon registration/during orientation to remind them of their responsibility to act and learn with integrity. Such a plan should ensure students are well-informed and actively accept this responsibility (beyond the current practice of sharing the Student Declaration and Responsibilities statement from the academic calendar).
5. Work with the Advisory Committee to expand the scope of the already well-established Academic Integrity Matters (AIM) program to tackle issues of misconduct and cheating beyond plagiarism. For e.g., contract cheating.
6. Define what constitutes academic misconduct and violations of academic integrity. Perform a series of jurisdictional scans to see how other institutions handle academic misconduct cases and document best practices. This review should explore restorative justice and its role in an academic context.
7. Implement/integrate a student code of behaviour or pledge in the regulation to steer a culture of academic integrity, where aspirational values are well understood and shared among all community members.
8. Support Associate Deans/Instructors in processing academic misconduct cases to achieve consistency across units.
9. Collect relevant data from students, staff, and faculty members, on an ongoing basis, to support evidence-based decisions, processes, and initiatives.
   • Ensure misconduct cases records kept at the Provost’s Office are up-to-date, as per regulation.
   • Measure impact of educational strategies to identify issues and opportunities on campus. For example, continue to embed questions on awareness of resources and perceptions of academic integrity in the annual UES.
   • Combine all relevant data in a comprehensive annual report, and make it available to Associate Deans to support ongoing efforts and initiatives.
10. Engage with other post-secondary institutions in BC to advocate for legislation in the province and Canada against contract cheating websites and companies.

Recommendation:

Create, implement, support, and evaluate a variety of strategies to train and educate students, faculty, and administrators with the goal of strengthening our culture of academic integrity across UBC.

Actions:

1. Develop and deploy an ongoing UBC education campaign around academic integrity to highlight this as a core value of the university. Such a campaign should target all community members including students, staff, and faculty members.
2. Uncover and dismantle myths around academic misconduct and academic integrity. Some myths to investigate include contract cheating, demographics of who engages in academic misconduct, and who is responsible for informing and maintaining academic integrity in higher education.
3. Offer training to faculty members whose responsibility is to investigate and escalate cases of academic misconduct.
4. Include modules on academic integrity as part of the training process for teaching assistants (TAs) and peer leaders. Include in this training discussion of what constitutes academic misconduct, the actions/procedures involved, and their responsibility/authority to act in such matters.
5. Engage with the Academic Integrity Matters (AIM) program to explore how it can take a restorative justice approach in alignment with the field’s latest trends and best practices.
6. Actively engage with students (graduate and undergraduate) around issues related to academic integrity more generally to inform education campaigns, processes, and approaches. Some ideas could include:
   • Organize workshops or develop training modules on academic integrity for students. These
     workshops and modules should be short, interesting and focus on key areas surrounding issues pertaining to academic misconduct.
   • Student events such as quizzes and poster competitions can be organized to lure student attention towards the importance of AI.
7. Build and maintain a cross-campus website on academic integrity to inform the campus community of resources, processes, policies, and engagement opportunities. This website must be both user-friendly and accessible.
8. Coordinate an ongoing community of practice to provide members of the campus community with the opportunity to learn informally, share, discuss, and challenge academic integrity issues.
9. Actively engage with students who have academic misconduct cases, to gain feedback about the process and insights as to ways to improve it and better educate students. Considerations for this include privacy and confidentiality, but there are effective means to facilitate this and allow for information sharing.
10. Engage the campus community in celebrating academic integrity during Celebrate Learning Week and/or other relevant cross-campus events. The goal will be to seek engagement from those who do not usually engage in academic integrity discussions.

Recommendation:

Build opportunities to further teach and reinforce best practices related to academic integrity
into curriculum and teaching practices.

Actions:

1. Work with instructors to encourage them to clearly define and communicate what academic integrity looks like in their discipline and classroom.
2. Provide guidelines and best practices for assessments that are both in-person and online in the same course.
3. Encourage instructors to explicitly include academic integrity discussion and resources in their
   courses, possibly one of the academic integrity modules adapted by the working group, in their course and to help guide students through how those resources relate to their specific course.
4. Offer resources and support for faculty members to teach and model academic integrity in their courses.
5. Support and educate instructors around teaching and learning technologies available at UBC that can help students learn about and practice academic integrity in their work as well as being aware of how the tools can be used to identify issues and challenges related to academic misconduct that may be occurring in the classroom.
6. Offer support for program-level curriculum mapping to identify where academic integrity is taught and reinforced within a program through existing resources for curriculum planning and analysis (e.g., UBC Curriculum MAP).

• Centre for Teaching & Learning
  • • Course Design Checklist
    • Assessment Design Checklist
    • Syllabus Language
• The International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI)
• Resources from the Ombudsperson — Academic Misconduct
• 10 Strategies to Minimize Cheating in an Online Environment 
• Scholarly Work on Academic Integrity
• Learning with Honesty and Integrity – PowerPoint presentation

• Student Learning Hub
  • • Academic Integrity Matters for Unauthorized Collaboration and Cheating
    • Academic Integrity Matters for Writing and Plagiarism
    • Introduction to Academic Integrity
• Resources from the Ombudsperson