How do we get students to care about academic integrity without focusing on punishment? How can we help them put this concept into practice when it comes to their own work? So often, university resources that are ostensibly about academic integrity actually focus on academic dishonesty, using a punitive framework: they instruct students only on policies and consequences. As part of the our active research project, “Our Cheating Hearts? Changing the Conversation through Academic Integrity Curriculum in First-Year Arts Programs,” we are re-framing curricular approaches to academic integrity, emphasizing the production of ethical scholarship as inseparable from one’s role in a scholarly community. Focusing on how pedagogical interventions into student learning of academic integrity that address clear gaps in understanding, this project works to create sustainable and flexible resources to better introduce students to ethical scholarship (and how to produce it) as part of the fabric of the university. These interventions range from in-class activities and group exercises to powerpoint presentations and take-home readings. They focus on both the values and practices of academic integrity. Faculty involved choose what they would like to integrate, and how, though we ask that at least two to three classes are dedicated to academic integrity.
It is our hope that one of the outcomes of this project will be easy-to-adapt materials that anyone might implement as part of their curricula, wherever that may be.
The project responds to four areas of concern:
1. The lack of coherence in how first-year UBC Arts students are educated about academic integrity;
2. The typical focus in existing instruction on policies and consequences related to academic dishonesty rather than helping students internalize an understanding of academic integrity and why it matters;
3. The research demonstrating that academic dishonesty is a ubiquitous problem that existing curricula clearly are not effectively addressing;
4. The fact that students’ lack of confidence or expertise in the principles and practices of ethical scholarship causes them to experience considerable distress. Through shared resources, data, and discussion, we can bring about renewed understanding of and approaches to this core value of the academic community in ways that invite all members (students, staff, and faculty) to participate in the ethical production of knowledge.
We are evaluating how both students and faculty are finding and engaging with these curriculum materials through a mixed method approach, including focus groups, interviews, and surveys. If you are interested, you can read more about our methods on the section entitled, “Current Project Stage.”
The research team and project is based out of the University of British Columbia (UBC) on unceded Musqueam territory in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and has been generously funded by UBC’s Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund.