“As students spend more and more time online and students themselves increasingly engage in production on the internet, assurance of academic integrity and guarding against plagiarism is something that should start well before the work is produced.”
Ko & Rossen, p. 81
All Princeton students have signed an Honor Code that explicitly forbids plagiarism and any attempt to gain an unfair advantage — yet some find themselves straying from academic integrity under stress, particularly in a remote learning environment.
“Distance learning can weaken students’ attachment to honor codes and learning objectives.”
Lee (2020)
While “remote learning" is not quite the same as “distance learning” in the quote above, similar factors can come into play if students feel isolated and unconnected because of the remote environment. Instructors should anticipate these dynamics while creating the course syllabus:
- Be sure that the syllabus has a clear, detailed statement concerning the application of the Honor Code to all graded assignments in the course, and a statement on course policies regarding homework, quizzes and exams.
- Include definitions of academically inappropriate behavior in this course, which may well differ from expectations in other courses. (Asking a friend to proofread a text for grammatical errors might be acceptable in a Politics class, but not in Beginning French).
- Provide clear and explicit guidelines for taking quizzes and tests, including specific details concerning acceptable (and unacceptable) resources, and attach these guidelines to each quiz and test you send out or post on Canvas.
- Remind students often of these expectations and the students’ responsibilities throughout the course, not just in the syllabus at the outset of the course.
- Make cheating more difficult by personalizing the assignments. Rather than asking for answers that anyone could give, or that could be copied from someone else, have students create original, personal content.
- If possible, avoid giving previously used tests, which may be available in some dark corner of the internet or on a friend’s computer.
- Schedule tests to be taken at the same time — to the degree that differing time zones will allow — in order to decrease the possibility (and temptation) of students’ providing test questions and answers to each other. You can send out the questions at a prescribed time, and require students to send their answers back to you within an allotted timeframe. (See Assessment → Written Tests.)
- Lower the stakes for assessments by shortening them and increasing their frequency. Students will feel less pressure to cheat if they know that they have many opportunities to show you what they actually do know.
You can strengthen your students’ commitment to academic integrity by bolstering their sense of personal connectedness to you and the contents of the course.
Research suggests that the stronger the connection students feel with their instructors, the less likely they are to cheat (Lee 2020; Orosz et al 2015).
There is also evidence that the more meaningful the course content becomes to students, the lower the likelihood that they will cheat — which suggests that the more connections you can make between the course material and your students’ personal goals and experience, the more motivation they will have to maintain academic integrity.
References & Resources
Bushweller, K. (1999). Generation of cheaters. The American School Board Journal, 186(4), 24-32.
Christe, B. (2003). Designing online courses to discourage dishonesty. Educause Quarterly, 4, 54-58.
Ko, S. and Rossen, S. (2017). Teaching Online: A Practical Guide (4th ed.). New York and London: Routledge.
Lee, C. (2020). How to uphold academic integrity in remote learning. (Accessed June 15, 2020)
Orosz, G, Toth-Kiraly, I, Böthe, B, Kusztor, A, Kovacs, Z. and Janvan, M. (2015). Teacher enthusiasm: A potential cure of academic cheating. Frontiers in Psychology.
Allain, R. (2020). How to stop students from cheating on remote tests during a pandemic. OneZero. Accessed July 13, 2020.