Faculty & Instructors

• Teach students why being able to do things the correct way matters and how to meet the expectations. 
• Take time in class to reinforce to students how important academic integrity is.
• Identify common kinds of academic misconduct or related errors that concern you most and teach students how to avoid them. Explore skill gaps.
• Practice, reinforce, and model academic integrity throughout your course to prevent the time required to respond to cases of academic misconduct later in the term.
• Explore sample lesson plans for teaching academic integrity skills.

Students might continue to make the same or more serious academic misconduct errors because no one has ever corrected them before. 

They may not know what they are doing is academic misconduct, or they may know that it is, but think it’s not serious, or even worse, they may think that their instructors don’t care.  

• Identify and respond to academic misconduct-related errors, including minor ones as soon as you encounter them.  
• Use practice with feedback to allow students to understand errors and improve.
• You don’t need proof of academic misconduct to have a conversation about what a student’s process was to complete an assessment.
• Talk with individuals and groups of students for exploration purposes. 

• Share your enthusiasm, build rapport with your students. Make an effort to speak with individual students before and after classes.
• Share your personal approaches to the subject material, to completing academic work, and to maintaining academic integrity.
• Share tips with students on time management and how they can keep up with their work and prepare for course assessments.
• Explain how breaches of academic integrity affect you personally as an instructor.
• Normalize help-seeking. Remind students about your office hours and let them know you welcome student questions about expectations.

• Help students see the intrinsic value in what they are learning—not just what to learn, but why learning it is a good thing.
• Help students value the feedback you provide and see that it can be used to help them improve in time for later assessments or for next levels of study.
• Connect what is to be learned to students’ futures.
• Use reflection activities or assignments that require students to connect the course material to their own lives.
• Use assessments that are close to real-world application.
• Double-check the alignment between your assessment task and the learning outcome you want to see students have achieved.
• Allow for more choice and voice in classroom activities and assessment.

• Coordinate assessment due dates within programs to reduce coincidental overlap or overload.
• Stage submission of components of larger assignments over the term to help students avoid procrastination and to know whether they are on track.
• Consider appropriately flexible extension policies.
• Reinforce academic integrity expectations when students are most vulnerable to the temptations of academic misconduct (e.g., just before the due date or exam).
• When possible, coordinate assessment due dates within programs to reduce coincidental overlap or overload.

When students feel uncertain about:

• their standing – sometimes because of a lack of feedback, 
• the nature of the assessment – sometimes due to a lack of information, and/or
• their ability to do what is required in terms of the needed skills, competence, time, or energy; 

this can mean some feel desperate or resentful and some may see academic misconduct as a coping strategy or a justified response. Reduce uncertainty by:

• Sharing as much information about the nature of assessments as you can, so that students understand what you are looking for and what they should do to be successful.
• Giving students practice with the knowledge and skills you will assess for grades.
• Providing useful and timely feedback for students so that they know what to do to improve and what to focus on.
• Sharing the criteria for grades so that students know what good looks like on your papers, assignments, reports, presentations, and so on.

• Remember what it is like to be new to these expectations.
• Different instructors and programs will set different kinds of restrictions and options for students, and this can confuse matters.  
• When students are new, they may make assumptions or not understand the instructions.
• Welcome questions and clarifications.

• Do more than provide a link to the academic misconduct regulations
• Use plain language, define terms that may be new to some students 
• Provide examples of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable

• Students are more persuaded by reasons the expectations are good for their learning or for their futures as professionals.
• Avoid focusing mostly on academic misconduct consequences because it communicates mistrust.
• Balance knowledge of consequences with value of learning and taking responsibility for the quality and fairness of assessments.

- Consider space:

• Room set up and practices related to placing resources and/or devices out of reach.
  • This may be challenging when course enrolment is determined by classroom capacity for lectures and learning activities rather than the spacing for exams.

- Consider how to judge the written work (e.g. in-class essays) knowing:

• few students today are accustomed to physically writing by hand,
• few students today are accustomed to composing without real time revision options of word processing,
• students who are reading and writing in an additional language may be disadvantaged by time restrictions.

- Consider allowing some resources, where it makes sense.

• Formula sheets, calculators, software.
• Single page of notes meeting specific criteria.
• Textbooks or other course materials.

- Consider students new to university finals may need to have some of the norms and practices associated with the formality of exam-taking explained. 

- Consider the range of devices students may have on their person that could be a concern.

- Consider online assessments where:

• there are no restrictions in terms of access to resources or devices, and
• use of invigilation software is practical and brings sufficient security.

- Consider capabilities and limitations of proctoring software.

• Learn about functionality and EDI concerns associated with USask licensed software called Proctorio.
• Some Colleges have licenses for other kinds of proctoring software. Check with your College or academic unit.

- Consider capabilities of Canvas quizzes and whether they fit your security needs.

• Change assessments every term so that what was posted in the past is limited to being an example and not the actual assessment.
• Check sites of concern and ask for copyrighted material to be removed.
• Design assessments to rely on more in class context or experiences so that a person or service or tool without that context has trouble doing the assignment well for a student.
• Teach about matters of copyright as a legal issue, that is different from but related to academic integrity in university study.
• Use watermarks logos, disclaimers, or other commentary to make it more difficult for students to share content downloaded from Canvas.

• Learn more about Homework help sites (this site)

In-person assessments are typically invigilated or supervised by an instructor or their designate to ensure any restrictions placed on students while they complete the assessment are followed.

What the restriction is will determine how to identify it during or after the timed, supervised assessment is complete.

• Refer to information on USask examination rules and invigilation

USask does not subscribe to text-matching software. (e.g., Turnitin)

Finding matching text can suggest plagiarism, but instructors need to apply their academic judgment to discern whether the match is plagiarism or not.

Interpretation must be done by a course instructor who:

• knows what was permitted and what was not,
• recognizes their own assumptions, perspectives, and biases about what learning processes are expected of students and how this means they use Canvas,
• understands what activity logs show and what kinds of activity or non-activity they suggest. 

Learn more:

• Identifying Plagiarism - USask (article)
• Evidence of Contract Cheating in Student Assignments - Crockett, R. (2022). Chapter: Presentation, Properties and Provenance: The Three Ps of Identifying Evidence of Contract Cheating in Student Assignments (resource)

• Learn more about academic misconduct (this site)

Students may find a conversation about academic misconduct very distressing, understandably. You can set an appropriate tone that shows respect for the student and the processes laid out in the USask Regulations.

If you reach out to a student about a concern, be sure you are in a position to respond to their email promptly (e.g., within 24 hours). Most students will be distressed by even a gentle inquiry and waiting days to hear back from you won’t help.

• Plan the conversation, USask (article)

• How to lead a discovery interview about contract cheating, University of Calgary (resource)

• Be up to speed on the Academic Misconduct Regulations

• Consult the Academic Administrator in your College.

• Students are not made aware of their errors and may make the same ones or worse again.

• Students are aware of their academic misconduct, but without consequences, they may risk it again.

• Other students see that academic misconduct goes unaddressed, they lose confidence in the fairness of assessments and might feel like compromising their own academic integrity could be worth it.