Ensuring integrity in your classroom is probably best approached as a two-part assignment. The first part involves educating the students as to your expectations for the integrity of their work in that class. This should include the basic elements that are expected by the University, along with those expectations that are specific to your class or discipline. The second part of ensuring integrity in the class involves actively preventing academic misconduct and confronting situations where you believe academic misconduct might have occurred. Below are tips that you might find helpful in creating and maintaining an environment of integrity in your classroom.
- Print your expectations in your syllabus (here
are some examples).
- Print the URL for the Office of Student Conduct in your syllabus,
from there, students can review the Code.
- If you maintain a web site for the class, link to the Office of Student
Conduct.
- Talk about your expectations in your first few class sessions. Talk
about "why", not just "what".
- Contact the Office of Student Conduct to get a staff member or student
to come to your class for a presentation on academic integrity.
- Print the honor pledge on your syllabus, on your exams, and have
students write it on their written work.
- Remind students of your expectations for integrity prior to all
tests, quizzes and projects.
- If the course requires a research paper, incorporate a short lecture
on how to do the research and where to go on the campus for help with
questions in this area. This may include how to cite Internet or electronic
sources. Follow this link for resources in this area. The library is
a great resource.
- Require students to submit topics for your approval, and then produce
drafts prior to submission of the final paper, and don't accept last
minute changes. Many faculty choose to keep the draft for comparative
purposes with the final submission.
- Use in class writing assignments to gauge student progress if appropriate
to the material.
- Carefully monitor the process of handing in materials to protect
students from the theft of their work by others.
- If you will be using Blue Books for an exam, have each student turn
in an empty book the class prior to the exam. Redistribute the books
randomly on the day of the exam.
- Provide students the scratch paper they need for the exam.
- Have all students place their bookbags at the front of the classroom
prior to handing out the exam.
- If possible, seat students every other row. Administer more than
one version of the exam, even if it means that the pages of the exam
are just in a different order.
- Number the exams that are handed out and require that they be returned.
- Have your exams proctored at all times, and make sure to move around
the room.
- Use different versions of the exam if you allow students to take
exams early or late.
- Clearly mark the incorrect answers on a test using a mark that passes
through the answer.
- Let the class know that you will photocopying a random sample of
the exams for your files prior to returning them to the class.
- Watch for changes in students' behavior, their placement in the
testing environment, and their appearance.
- Be aware of items that make it difficult to see the students' face, such as hats or sunglasses.
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