Explore strategies to support integrity and mitigate factors that lead to academic misconduct

Spending some time discussing reasons for academic misconduct and ways to support academic integrity can allay the occurrence of incidents in the future. This type of conversation lets your students know that you are aware of and understand the pressures they face. In addition, you can collaboratively help them identify resources and strategies to deal with those challenges.

Early in the semester, after you have provided students with materials to help them explore the topic of academic integrity, invite students to discuss the reasons that may explain why students fail to meet academic standards and expectations. It may be helpful to have a list of examples for this brainstorming session. Some examples include, insufficient time, lack of content knowledge, difficulty with language, misunderstanding the importance of academic integrity, pressure to do well.

Now that we have spent some time discussing strategies for ensuring our students understand and may practice academic integrity, the next section explores how we may design assessments to encourage academic integrity and support student success.