Academic Integrity Training for Students and Faculty
GVSU’s Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution
Anthony T. Williams, Jr.

Holding students accountable for academic misconduct has been a priority for colleges and universities since the beginning of higher education. Faculty expect and trust that their students will honestly complete work independently as they pursue their academic studies. Like many universities, Grand Valley State University (GVSU) understands that we must use a multifaceted approach to address academic misconduct effectively.  In addition to the facilitation of a  restorative, socially just, and educational conduct process, GVSU’s Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution (OSCCR) provides students an...

It is time to be strategic.

As we prepare for next semester, it seems as if there is more to do and less time than ever before.  Managing increasing academic misconduct caseloads with limited budgets and few staff can seem especially daunting. Faculty managing academic misconduct may feel removed from the process, relying on online tutorials and remote communication to resolve issues. Students are overwhelmed and making sense of an altered learning environment.

There is an ongoing, meaningful conversation about the increases in sophistication of computer-assisted tools designed to pass off unattributed academic work, or to provide test and assignment answers. An immediate response is to be as vigilant as possible, to prevent the perception of academic dishonesty. In...

Spotlight: The Alberta Council on Academic Integrity

 Statement Against Racism in Matters Related to Academic Integrity

On June 4th, 2020, the Alberta Council on Academic Integrity released a Statement Against Racism in Matters Relating to Academic Integrity. The group formed in 2019 to promote and advocate for academic integrity across Alberta.

The Alberta Council on Academic Integrity stands united against systemic racism and discrimination in all forms. As such, they have released a statement recognizing and opposing the racism evident in the manner in which particular students are identified, reported and sanctioned for breaches of academic integrity based on race, colour or language.

The council issue...

The Importance of Research Integrity in a Global Pandemic

David Ison
PhD Professor 
Graduate School
Northcentral University

While much of the attention of ICAI and its many members focuses on academic integrity from the student side, we have to remember – and advocate for – integrity in the work of faculty and researchers as well. What better example can we lay forth for students than for teachers and professors to “practice what they preach.” Unfortunately, retractions of research articles occur regularly, sometimes for honest errors and, for others, due to egregious breaches of ethical standards. No place can misleading or deceptive research cause more real ...

Lee Ann Clements, PhD Director of Academic Integrity, Professor of Biology & Marine Science, Jacksonville University

The move to remote learning in the wake of the pandemic has produced some unusual trends in the incidents of academic integrity violations at Jacksonville University. The data show that people of all ages when presented with stressful, uncertain times make bad decisions based on lack of information. This includes reaching out to others for comfort and reassurance, even when they do not have the answers. Professors and administrators need to be aware of the ways our course design, our reaction to the rapid shift to distance learning, and our reliance on familiar assessments of student progress may have contributed to the trend.

The number of offenses I ...

Being an academic integrity advisor has been one of the most rewarding and challenging tasks I have ever practiced as a professional in recent years. Students who come to me are those that are involved in a reported incident of academic misconduct. The professors I advise are those who have reported cases of academic dishonesty and whom, in one way or another, are part of them. But what does being an academic integrity advisor mean?

Let me start by telling you that at Universidad de Monterrey, we have an Honor Council composed of students, professors, and staff from the Center for integrity who are in charge of reviewing academic dishonesty cases. This Honor Council holds hearings to listen to the parties involved, consider all the evidence presented, and determine consequences ...

For the fourth year running, Texas Tech University’s Ethics Center has hosted a Faculty, Student and Staff Ethics Symposium. Every spring, the campus community is invited to submit current scholarship related to ethics either from within an academic field or more broadly related to the work of an academic community. Submitted papers are judged by a panel of faculty and staff who rate them to award first, second, and third place for faculty, staff, and student categories. The winners present their work during the symposium and are awarded monetary prizes. The submitted papers are also collected for an edition of the Journal of the TTU Ethics Center (forthcoming this Fall, 2020).

2020’s symposium was held as a virtual event attended online ...

I work at the Center for Innovation in Education (CIE, for its initials in Spanish), at Universidad Panamericana in Mexico. The CIE is a space where we support professors to develop their creative ideas, launch projects and promote their teaching talent. We also hold different workshops for that purpose.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, our work team thought about creating a series of online workshops that would support our professors in their teaching practice during these contingency months. Among these, we decided to develop one on academic integrity that could help them to overcome some of the current challenges.

I had the opportunity to give this one on academic integrity last week and I want to share with you that the experience was very enriching and challenging....

Academic integrity in regular classrooms is not always easy to achieve, now imagine in remote ones. With the COVID-19 pandemic, this topic has become much more important, I might even say alarming. Because of my work, teachers constantly ask me how can they ensure that their students work with academic integrity, some of them, are even more distrustful and think that with remote classes it will be more common for students to commit academic dishonesty.

I am also a teacher and I must admit that this mistrust has also crossed my mind. However, I remember the foundations of teaching, where what is important, in addition to the knowledge that is taught, is the trust that must be built between student and teacher. With this said, I consider that the behavior ...

When training to become a restorative conference facilitator, an early exercise involves brainstorming and then ranking the reasons that “most people do the right thing most of the time.” In the two years that I have given this training, invariably, “fear of punishment” is mentioned, but it always appears fairly low on the list, whereas “values,” “community,” and “responsibilities tied to relationships,” or a version thereof, consistently appear at the top. In my experience, this insight is partially reflected in most of our institutions’ approaches to academic integrity, in a focus on prevention and education over policing and punishment. But to what extent does prevention and education directly speak to the reasons people do the right thing? And how well are thes...