UNCG sets the expectations for our students via the Student Code of Conduct by, “Requiring intellectual and personal honesty in learning, teaching, research, activities, and service.” Course syllabi include academic integrity expectations. Faculty communicate expectations at the start of the course, assignments, grading rubrics, etc. but do students understand these expectations? As students begin their coursework, consider ways to help students practice ethical, scholarly work.
Special thanks to Kathryn Aldridge, M.Ed and Elizabeth Tomlin, Ph.D. for their work in creating this content for UNCG faculty.
Ask students to share their understanding of academic integrity early in the semester. It’s more than just agreeing to a policy, it’s an expectation of performance. Consider a pre-test at the start of the semester to see if your students can identify good examples of ethical work in a disciplinary context. Ask students to share their current strategies for documenting outside information to check for understanding.
Be the example for your students when it comes to citing the work of others. Cite all outside sources of information in your lectures and presentations. Provide citations for all work posted in Canvas including graphics, hyperlinks, and videos.
Share tutorials that give specifics about how to create citations.
Share your process with students regarding how you complete your academic work while documenting your outside sources to give them strategies. Allow space for an ongoing discussion throughout the course to provide strategies and resources that students can use to avoid plagiarism and other academic integrity issues.
Consider one or more formative assessments in your course that scaffold the use of ideas from others in their work to allow students to practice. Ask students to create citations and document the work of others in a low-stakes setting so they are able to accurately cite information in a larger assignment such as a term paper. Additional ideas for teaching students to avoid plagiarism are available on this Faculty Focus website.
Kathryn Alridge’s (Human Development and Family Studies) approach to scaffolding ethical, scholarly work in her classes: tutorial
Students discussed both the tutorial posted above and examples using articles from the class reading to start the conversation about how to document outside information.
When their papers were graded, three in all, parts of their reference page that were correct were highlighted. The parts that were not correct were noted below the “bubble” that described the error. First was their incorrect entry, followed by a corrected version that supported them to learn their error as well as to see how to include the information correctly.
This feedback was to be applied to subsequent papers and instructors watched for improvement, hoping not to have repeated mistakes. The feedback system was the same, copy/paste their error, followed by how to make the entry correctly.
By the end of the semester, with very few exceptions, the students were able to create an accurate reference page independently.
Give students feedback about their understanding of ethical, scholarly work. Direct them to specific resources that help them address areas that need more work. Consider directing students to the UNCG Writing Center for guidance.
Ask students to turn in their papers using Turnitin and use the originality report to guide them on updates. Provide assistance on how to read the originality report to students. Here is a possible resource to share. If you are allowing students to upload papers as a teaching tool separate from the final assignment, be sure to create the formative assessment and select the “Do not store the submitted papers” option. That way, when students submit their final work through Turnitin for a grade, their earlier draft will not cause false originality concerns.
Online Testing
Online tests or even paper tests that are returned are often shared by students to online sites like Chegg, Course Hero and Quizlet. If you return tests with the answers or share the answers in Canvas then these easily become freely available to all future students and you probably won’t want to reuse the questions. It is obviously good practice to provide students with feedback on their assessments so they can learn from them. The question then is how can we deal with this issue without having to write completely novel exams and quizzes every semester?
Suggestions:
Put a statement in your syllabus (example syllabus statements) that students do not have your permission to post any of your intellectual property on these websites and that you will follow through with an academic integrity violation if they are found and the poster is identified.
Frequently share with students HOW to learn the content/concepts in your class and how to organize their time in order to be well prepared for your exams. Explain that testing themselves with sample questions after studying is an excellent way to see if they are prepared for a test, but that simply memorizing old questions is risky. Then you have to make it risky!
DO write a few new questions every semester!
Use Canvas Quizzes. Canvas Quizzes will randomize your test by question, and if you combine that with each question being pulled from a pool of multiple questions, with a tight time limit, students do not have enough time to look up all of the questions or collaborate with each other.
Make alternate versions of your questions subtly different so that students who are simply collaborating or looking online answer the wrong questions. This will hopefully deter this behavior on the next next assessment.
Have your intellectual property removed from these websites. When you prepare an exam or assignment, Google a particular phrase that is in your question. If it is on a site like Chegg, the search will likely take you right to the question, even though you can’t see the whole page without a subscription. You can submit a takedown notice without any actual proof of copyright and the material is taken down within a day or two. Course Hero operates in a similar way.
Request to get material removed from Chegg and Course Hero (more information under the “Chegg” and “Course Hero” headings below)
UNCG Examples
The following content showcases specific UNCG courses and programs that discuss and/or scaffold ethical, scholarly work for students:
Kathryn Aldrigde, Human Development and Family Studies
This class has a heavy focus on Anti-Bias Education and their four primary goals of Identity, Diversity, Justice and Advocacy. Each case study demonstrated a different bias that can be demonstrated in an Early Childhood classroom, first SES/cultural bias, followed by ability, actually disability, bias and lastly racism. This course also has a heavy focus on evidence-based practices. In addition to the textbook, the students read several research articles on each of these topics. These articles were models for them. Also, in class we would click on the library website at the bottom of the UNCG homepage and demonstrate how to choose a database or journal article A-Z from the field, search by author or topic as well as how to choose several search terms in order to find a list of articles that might match with their personal philosophy as a teacher of young children.
We also got customized LibGuides created with Jackson Library staff that guided our students in their search, providing visuals on a number of topics and steps. http://uncg.libguides.com/HDF-SES341
REquesting Material Removal from Chegg
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Jan 27 – sent 3 requests to have exam questions removed. All removed within 24 hrs with no further questions asked. No proof of IP ownership was requested.
Requesting Material Removal from Course Hero
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