17 Academic Integrity

The topic and approaches to academic integrity in online courses can be difficult to navigate. For any approach we ask: is the system acceptable to instructors and to students in terms of preserving the integrity of the process, and is the technology feasible?The use of proctored platforms requires students to have particular technology and suitable test-taking environment (e.g. webcam, good wi-fi, quiet location) and there is concern over how this impacts student privacy. There are also concerns among students and faculty alike regarding the ease with which students could be dishonest in their work and test taking.

This section will highlight research in this area and provide links to UBC resources that might be of use to you and/or your students. We also include some advice/thoughts from summer instructors who taught online this summer.

All of the online options are a compromise and offer different approximations of invigilated, in-person exams. This is one reason to reduce the stakes of the exams.  For scheduled exams, a key decision around online testing is whether invigilation will be needed and what system might feasibly support it. Options are quite limited and described below.

On July 30th, 2020, Skylight hosted an online workshop about academic integrity and inclusive practices in online courses. Within this session, we explored academic integrity in online courses and provided examples of how this issue has been approached by Science faculty. People also had an opportunity to share their own strategies and concerns within breakout groups.Skylight also put together a document about contract cheating. It provides an overview of contract cheating, suggestions for mitigating this type of cheating, and processes related to investigating and reporting alleged cases.

• Inform students of academic integrity at the beginning of the course and review your expectations as an instructor and the expectations of UBC. Students are often unaware of the UBC Academic Honesty and Standards and the severity of Discipline for Academic Misconduct. We don’t want to scare students, but want to engage them in an open and non-threatening manner so that they can better understand why academic integrity is so important and a part of the UBC culture.
• See “File Approaches to Academic Integrity in the Syllabus 20 Aug 2020.pdf could not be included in the ePub document. Please see separate zip file for access.” for examples of how UBC faculty introduce students to academic integrity in their course syllabi.
• Students are already stressed and anxious with online examinations so be supportive and encourage them to reach out with any questions or concerns ahead of testing.
• Provide students with a contingency plan for what to do if their connectivity is poor during the examination. For instance, one instructor rerouted their work phone number to their cell phone so that students could reach them if anything went wrong.

Instructors have a number of suggestions with respect to features within Canvas Quizzes that could help to alleviate issues of cheating.

• Discuss your design strategies with students to ensure they understand why you are making these decisions.
• Give students practice with the exam format and the style of the questions they will be asked.
• Disable the back button in Canvas Quizzes so students cannot return to previous questions.
  • This is a common suggestion in online testing but instructors have noted that students really did not like this feature as it did not mimic their ability to return to previous questions in a face-to-face examination setting. Those who had the most success with this option emphasize the need to tell students in advance that you understand this is stressful, but that this is one way you are striving for academic integrity in an online testing format.
• Change the Manual Grading default in Canvas Quizzes so that students do not see the results of their quiz, test, and/or exam until the instructor releases the grades.
• Randomize the questions in Canvas Quizzes.
• Use a question bank with differing numerical values (a strategy often used in WeBWorK).
• Make the test/exam open book.
• Include questions for students to upload original, written work.
• Allow students back into the examination/test if they experience connectivity issues.

Follow up with students

• An instructor gave students the option of their exam being proctored or the instructor randomly following up with 30 students (out of 150) in the course to explain 1-2 of their exam responses. Students opted for the latter option as they were rather nervous about the proctored approach.
• After the first “big” test or exam, follow up with students about their experience and if/how you might be able to make changes or how students can be better prepare for the next assessment.

Zoom supports large group web meetings with breakout groups, so can be used for live invigilation via webcam. The process is approximately:

• Offer enough sessions to cover the whole course where each session fits within the participant limit.
• In each session, break students into groups, ideally where they can be seen all on one screen by a proctor (e.g., 19 students plus one space for an invigilator).
• Invigilators can remain within rooms or move between them systematically, depending on personnel. If invigilators keep their webcams off, they could monitor multiple rooms at a time (using multiple browser tabs or devices) but the rooms would not know which was being watched at any given time.
• You will need clear protocols for how to handle observed misconduct (what evidence should be collected, who to contact, what they will do in the moment or later to contact the student) and student bathroom breaks; these need to be clear to your instructional team and as possible to the students.

The Zoom session link can be created and made available to students from Canvas. For further detail on the different platforms, see: Online invigilation using Zoom.

For details on using Zoom for invigilation, see Skylight’s guide on Using Zoom for Exam Invigilation.

Students could hold up ID cards to their webcam if being monitored via Zoom, partially obscuring their student number if privacy is a concern.

Consider your goals for the end-of-course assessment and if online invigilation will not be feasible, or in any case as students will be completing their exam/assignment remotely, you may consider including an explicit integrity pledge as part of your course. Some tips for integrity pledge use:

• Have students write the pledge out (by hand or typing) rather than simply checking a box, though if time is tight you may want to decouple this from the timed portion of the test.
• You may want to add a note about the purpose of the pledge and the importance of not cheating for students’ learning.

Sample language

[This top part with the links would be implemented at the course level, and students would need to agree to it once per course.]

I hereby pledge that I have read and will abide by the rules, regulations, and expectations set set out in the Academic Calendar, with particular attention paid to:

1. The Student Declaration (http://www.calendar.ubc.ca/vancouver/index.cfm?tree=3,285,0,0)
2. The Academic Honesty and Standards (http://www.calendar.ubc.ca/vancouver/index.cfm?tree=3,286,0,0)
3. The Student Conduct During Examinations (http://www.calendar.ubc.ca/vancouver/index.cfm?tree=3,41,90,0)
4. And any special rules for conduct as set out by the examiner.

[This next statement should go at the start of any online assessment in which the integrity pledge is needed/desired.]

I affirm that I will not give or receive any unauthorized help on this examination, that all work will be my own, and that I will abide by any special rules for conduct set out by the examiner.

• A team of UBC faculty, staff, and students put together this self-enroll Canvas course about Academic Integrity for first year students enrolled in Jump Start. It has a lot of great ideas, questions, and resources that might be useful to discuss in your courses.
• See these resources from a Large TLEF project led by Laurie McNeill (ASRW) about exploring and addressing academic integrity in UBC courses.
  • Our Cheating Hearts? Changing the Conversation Through Academic Integrity Curriculum
  • Academic Integrity Faculty Resources
• See the CTLT Online Teaching Program page on “Encouraging Academic Integrity” for how to discuss academic integrity with students and for suggestions on how to design your assessments to minimize cheating.
• The Chapman Learning Commons has a website for students about Academic Integrity and this particular section focuses specifically on helping students to understand what academic integrity is and tips for avoiding plagiarism.
• Further resources for Academic Integrity in Online Learning from the University of Calgary’s Taylor Institute