Academic Integrity: You Can Help Clear the Murky Waters

Issues of academic integrity can be challenging to manage in the classroom. While some cases are clear, others are less so and at times it can feel like—despite including academic integrity policies in our syllabi— students do not know what they did was a violation. In many cases, we assume that students have read the academic policies and our understanding and theirs about what constitutes cheating is the same. However, across various disciplines “originality” can have different meanings.

Maryellen Weimer, suggests that more open and candid conversations with students about what is and is not considered cheating in your classroom can benefit all students.Weimer encourages instructors to use some of the scenarios provided below and create additional scenarios that may be more relevant to their teaching situation. This helps to clarify exactly what is and what is not considered cheating in your particular course. This structured review of expectations related to academic integrity and personal evaluation of occurrences in academic life may be helpful. Below are two examples:

Scenario 1

Paul is working on a take-home test for math. He asks his girlfriend Grace, who’s a math major, to double check his calculations on several problems. She checks his answers and doesn’t find any errors. 

1. Is Paul cheating?
2. Is Grace cheating?

In a study that used a scenario similar to this one, 72% of the students did not think that Paul’s behavior was cheating, as compared to about 63% of instructors who thought it was.  

Scenario 2

Al and Jose are in the same art history course. The instructor gives take-home essay exams. Al and Jose spend some time talking about the questions and possible ways they could be answered. They then each write their essay individually. 

1. Is Al cheating?
2. Is Jose cheating?

In another study with a take-home exam scenario where a student asks if another student got the same answer and consequently identified a calculation error and corrected it, 45% of students and almost 71% of the instructors agreed this was cheating. Meanwhile, about the student who shared their answers, 32% of the students and 61% of the instructors called that cheating. 

From these two examples, we can see that the number of instructors and students who agree that particular actions or activities are cheating is far from unanimous and often opinions between students and instructors differ widely. Using some class time to actively engage in conversations about what cheating is, especially in your particular class, discipline and context, can support students to engage more readily in a shared definition of authentic class work.