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Academic Integrity for Faculty

What is Cheating?

Cheating is the use or attempted use of unauthorized materials, information, or study aids in any academic exercise. Examples of cheating include, but are not limited to: 

  • any use of books, texts, notes, calculators, applications, electronics, websites, programming code, computers, communication, and conversation with others that is restricted or forbidden during academic exercises
  • Copying on tests or final examinations
  • Acquiring a portion of assigned academic work from another person or source, or acquiring a copy of or information about a test or exam

Prevention

  • Discuss academic integrity with your students
  • Discuss contract cheating with your students
  • Use pedagogical statements on academic integrity
  • Integrate course learning materials
  • Require writing outlines
  • Implement assignment scaffolding with multiple drafts
  • Use shorter, in-class assignments to help identify skills/abilities
  • Assign and assess higher order thinking skills
  • Use individualized topics
  • Avoid using test questions and exercises from commercial textbooks
  • Require that students provide research notes if requested
  • Limit student access to marked assessments to help prevent them being uploaded
  • Require use of references to in-class activities
  • Assign live presentations or demonstrations in person or on digital platforms such as Zoom
    • Akimov & Malin (2020) list some of the advantages of oral examinations as being an increased desire to learn, reduced academic misconduct, and being faster to mark than written exams, with another consideration being that they are best suited for smaller classes of more experienced students.
  • Discuss collusion with your students
  • Provide clear guidelines around collaboration in course outlines, syllabi, etc. (Deale et al., 2020)
  • Specify where "collaboration ends and collusion begins" (Velliaris & Pierce, 2019)
  • Provide examples of what students can and should do in group work (Sutton & Taylor, 2011)
  • Offer guidance on best practices rather than only warnings on what not to do (Sutton & Taylor, 2011)
  • Use Ouriginal text-matching software for written assignments
  • Regularly refresh assessments to make sharing work counterproductive
  • Consider recommended strategies when designing Moodle or other online quizzes
  • Use assessment integrity checklist

Identification

Just as with other forms of misconduct, knowing your students and their language abilities/style is the best way to identify if a student has cheated. If something suddenly sounds like it was written by a different person with a different vocabulary, it may have been.

 

Identification in Moodle

In Moodle quizzes/tests, watch for trends in timing logs and answers. Examples could be:

  • students spending the exact same amount of time on questions
  • students getting the exact same questions wrong.

The Academic Misconduct Procedures Manual which accompanies Policy A25 will point staff towards procedures and resources to help gather information for the identification of potential academic misconduct. Contact the Manager of Library Services for more information.

 

References

Akimov, A., & Malin, M. (2020). When old becomes new: a case study of oral examination as an online assessment tool, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 45(8), p. 1205-1221.

Assiniboine College. (2023). Policy A25. https://assiniboine.net/sites/default/files/documents/2019-08/a25.pdf

Australian Government: TEQSA (2017). Good practice note: addressing contract cheating to safeguard academic integrity. https://www.teqsa.gov.au/latest-news/publications/good-practice-note-addressing-contract-cheating-safeguard-academic

Awdry R., & Newton, P. M. (2019). Staff views on commercial contract cheating in higher education: A survey study in Australia and the UK. Higher Education, 78(4), 593-610. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-00360-0 

Bertram Gallant, T. (2008). Academic integrity in the 21st century: a teaching and learning imperative. Jossey-Bass.

Bertram Gallant, T. (2017). Academic integrity as a teaching & learning issue: from theory to practice. Theory Into Practice, 56(2), 88-94.

Bertram Gallant, T. (2018). Course design, assessment & integrity: strange bedfellows? https://academicintegrity.org/blog/course-design-assessment-integrity-strange-bedfellows/ 

Bretag, T., Harper, R., Burton, M., Ellis, C., Newton, P., van Haeringen, K., Saddiqui, S., & Rozenberg, P. (2019). Contract cheating and assessment design: exploring the relationship. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 44(5), 676-691.

Clarke, R., & Lancaster, T. (2007). Establishing a systematic six-stage process for detecting contract cheating, in 2nd International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Applications, 2007, (New York, NY: ICPCA 2007), 342–347.

Deale, C.S., Lee, S.H., Bae, J, & White, B. (2020). An exploratory study of educators' and students' perceptions of collaboration versus cheating in hospitality and tourism education, Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism, 20(2), 89-104.

Eaton, S.E. (2018). 15 strategies to detect contract cheating. http://connections.ucalgaryblogs.ca/2018/10/01/15-strategies-to-detect-contract-cheating/

Eaton, S. E., Chibry, N., Toye, M. A., & Rossi, S. (2019). Interinstitutional perspectives on contract cheating: a qualitative narrative exploration from Canada. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 15(9). 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-019-0046-0

Ellis, C., Zucker, I., & Randall, D. (2018). The infernal business of contract cheating: Understanding the business processes and models of academic custom writing sites. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 14(1), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-017-0024-3

Hersey, C. (2019). The struggle is real! #Ineedapaperfast. Presented at the Canadian Symposium on Academic Integrity, Calgary, AB.
Lancaster, T., & Clarke, R. (2016). Contract cheating: the outsourcing of assessed student work. In: Bretag, T. (ed.) Handbook of academic integrity. Springer.

Morris, E. J. (2018). Academic integrity matters: five considerations for addressing contract cheating. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 14(15), https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-018-0038-5

Newton, P. (2018). How common is commercial contract cheating in higher education and is it increasing? A systematic review. Frontiers in Education, 3(67), https:/doi.org//10.3389/feduc.2018.00067 

Newton, P. M., & Lang, C. (2016). Custom essay writers, freelancers, and other paid third parties. In: Bretag, T. (ed.) Handbook of Academic Integrity. Springer.

Rogerson, A.M. (2017). Detecting contract cheating in essay and report submissions: process, patterns, clues and conversations. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 13(10). https:/doi.org//10.1007/s40979-017-0021-6

Sutton, A., & Taylor, D. (2011). Confusion about collusion: working together and academic integrity. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 36(7), 831-841.

Toye, M., Rossi, S., Chibry, N., & Eaton, S.E. (2019). Contract cheating: a view from three Calgary post-secondary institutions. Presented at the Canadian Symposium on Academic Integrity, Calgary, AB.

Velliaris, D.M., & Pierce, J.M. (2019). Cheaters beware: (re)designing assessment practices to reduce academic misconduct. In Prevention and Detection of Academic Misconduct in Higher Education, 1-38.

Whitley, B.E., & Keith-Spiegel, P. (2012). Academic dishonesty: an educator's guide. Psychology Press.

Yorke, J., Sefcik, L., & Veeran-Colton, T. (2020). Contract cheating and blackmail: A risky business? Studies in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2020.1730313