Recommendations for a balanced approach to supporting academic integrity: perspectives from a survey of students, faculty, and tutors

Abstract

Maintaining academic integrity is a growing concern for higher education, increasingly so due to the pivot to remote learning in 2020 caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We canvassed students, faculty, and tutors at an online Canadian university about their perspectives on academic integrity and misconduct. The survey asked how the university could improve policies concerning issues of academic integrity, how faculty and tutors handled cases of misconduct, about satisfaction with how academic violations were treated, and about the role of students, faculty, and tutors in encouraging academic integrity. As well, we collected suggestions from respondents for reducing cheating, addressing academic misconduct, and general ideas about academic integrity. The distinction between misconduct and integrity was not always clear in their comments. We received responses from 228 students and 73 faculty and tutors, generating hundreds of comments. In this paper we focus only on the answers to open-ended questions. Using content analysis, we categorized the replies into similar threads. After multiple iterations of analysis, we extracted three general recommendation groupings: Policy and Procedures, Compliance and Commitment, and Resources. Based on respondents’ views, we propose a balanced approach to supporting academic integrity. Although we conducted the study pre-COVID-19, the recommendations apply to current and future academic integrity practices in our context and beyond.

Embedded tutors: Enhancing student success and academic integrity with a pedagogy of kindness in first-year university

“…Academic integrity is an issue for higher education institutions (Hodgkinson et al, 2016;Kasneci et al, 2023;Kier & Ives, 2022;Young et al, 2018). Plagiarism has traditionally been and still is a prominent concern.…”

“…The student is often required to prove that they have not engaged in academic misconduct or to admit culpability. Existing literature calls for preventative strategies to address academic integrity issues in higher education to enable transformative student learning (Kier & Ives, 2022;Young et al, 2018). We propose that 'a carrot is more effective than a stick'; students who are provided with preventative education and alternative support (carrot) benefit more than those who experience the punitive repercussion (stick) that results from an academic misconduct allegation and investigation.…”

Exploring plagiarism

“…Good paraphrasing develops an original idea and a cited source with a smooth transition (see Acceptable paraphrasing). 7,14,20…”

“…An original work's words and sentence structures must be changed in a way that is representative of the original content. Good paraphrasing develops an original idea and a cited source with a smooth transition (see Acceptable paraphrasing ) 7,14,20…”

“…Secondary sources provide an analysis or interpretation based on primary sources such as a literature review. Primary sources should be used in the publication of the original work because credibility and depth are added to the research argument, whereas secondary sources may not include this information 5,6,20. It is critical for an author to determine if a source is a primary or secondary work prior to citation.…”