Academic Integrity Toolkit

In Fall of 2020, the Academic Integrity Working Group developed guidelines that, when implemented, could help reduce student academic integrity offences. These guidelines, known as the Academic Integrity Toolkit, have been reproduced here with a few changes:

• The Toolkit has always been considered a “living document” to facilitate any needed updates or additions. Hence, we’ve reformatted the Toolkit from a static PDF into this website in order to expedite making these changes in the future.
  
  
• The Toolkit was created in 2020 during a time of rapid shift from in-person instruction, clinical and field experiences, labs, etc. to remote and online forms of teaching and learning. These guidelines are relevant to any course design or teaching modality, but the online-specific strategies have been moved to their own section.
  
  
• Since the Toolkit’s publication, generative artificial intelligence and large language model use has infiltrated higher education. Although these guidelines have always addressed issues of academic integrity that may arise from generative A.I. use by students, we have added new language and links specific to academic integrity and A.I. technologies.

Introduction

We propose two core considerations to diminish student cheating:

1. Designing courses (and assignments) that reduce pressures and other situations that encourage student cheating.
2. Designing assessments that are more resistant to overt cheating, unauthorized collaboration, or other forms of integrity violations.

It is recognized that courses and course instructors will have varying options available to them, depending on factors, including:

• Course level (e.g., 1000-level undergraduate vs. 3000-level undergraduate vs. graduate)
• Class size (i.e., what works for a seminar of 10 will likely not be feasible for a class of 300+)
• Content (e.g., survey vs. seminar, writing class vs. lab class)

We also acknowledge that, like anything worthwhile, academic integrity mitigation strategies and techniques take work and effort—there is no quick fix, no guarantees, and no one-size-fits-all approach for improving academic integrity. Implement the suggestions below as appropriate for your needs or use them as a starting point and adapt them for your specific course. These tools and suggestions have been curated from conversations with faculty across many disciplines at Dalhousie and from the published work being done across the globe at institutions of higher education, and attributions have been made when beyond common knowledge in the field.