Title: General Strategies for Encouraging Academic Integrity
Course: Academic Integrity > Section: Encouraging Academic Integrity

Strategy 1: Design multiple, low-stakes assessments.

Low-stakes assessments lessen the risk involved with any one test, which helps mitigate the incentive to cheat. Students will take precautions when they feel that a single assignment can "make or break" their grades. And even if it didn't remove the kind of perceived risk that encourages cheating, low-stakes assessments have strong pedagogical value in their own right. Frequent, mastery-focused activities are what we know from cognitive science and psychology will help students with long-term retention. "The past few decades of research in cognitive psychology have given us excellent evidence that frequent, low-stakes assessments help students learn the course material much more effectively than infrequent, high-stakes assessments—and even much more effectively than the typical study behaviors of highlighting texts, reviewing notes, or rereading the books." - Lang, Cheating Lessons, Part 3

This doesn't mean getting rid of a final exam or paper. Instead, it could mean incorporating more regular assessments that help track student readiness for the final. Incorporating multiple opportunities in which they can apply what they've learned and get feedback from you and their peers can lessen the impact of any one item and give them a chance to integrate their new knowledge with skills and information they already know.

Here are some starting points for ideas and resources for low-stakes assessment:

- Assessment: Lower Stakes, Raise Retention — Edutopia
- Low-stakes testing — from Oswego SUNY
- Low-Stakes Assignments — from DePaul University

And if you look through those resources, you may notice a certain researcher's name pops up repeatedly, so check out Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning.

Strategy 2: Personalize the course.

Anonymity (especially online) can decrease our self-evaluation and self-regulation. According to the social identity model of deindividuation effects (SIDE), we also tend to act more like groups with which we identify when we are anonymous online. In other words, students are more likely to think "I know other students cheat," and to be less likely to reflect on their own actions.

Personalizing the course is the antidote to anonymity. Lessen the anonymity, and lessen the SIDE effects for your students. Here are some ideas for personalizing:

- Record a 1-2 minute video greeting for the week in Announcements.
- Give feedback on some of their assignments using the video recorder in Speedgrader.
- Respond to student posts directly in your discussion boards. Treat it as you would an in-person discussion.
- Address students by their preferred name in feedback.
- Use the introductory discussion boards (or better yet, a Flipgrid video format) to learn your students' motivations, goals, and expectations for the course.

Social presence helps promote learning for all students. This gets into the Community of Inquiry framework, in which social presence, teaching presence and cognitive presence work together to build an environment that welcomes curiosity and exploration.

Strategy 3: Establish class norms.

Make it clear what you do and don't consider cheating in context to when cheating could occur. It's one thing to reference NKU's academic honesty policies in the syllabus, but consider having your students agree to those policies before every test. Send a reminder before an exam of the behavior you expect from students. Being specific about behavior - even those you would think of as obvious - helps set student expectations.

How you frame it also matters. Students can live up to your expectations - or down to them. We talked about building social presence, and part of that presence is building an environment in which you encourage students to live up to their potential. That means outlining the integrity you expect from them - not all the ways you anticipate catching them cheating.

In strategy 2, we mentioned using the introductory boards to get to know your students goals and motivations for the course. One way that you can encourage the students to view the course as valuable is by responding to them with how you think the course can help them with their goals. Tie it back to one of the course outcomes or objectives, or point out an upcoming lesson you think will be relevant. There are ways to build a rapport with them by finding out an interest or hobby.  Even if their motivation is, "I need to take this course to graduate," this is a valid motivation, as is, "I just want a passing grade."

Strategy 4: Build specificity into your course.

Specificity is the principle that states that a training or task should be relevant and appropriate for the skill you are trying to build. Being specific means demonstrating that each task, activity, and assessment fulfills a purpose that will move them closer to the goals of the course and will benefit them. An assignment that can build in specific events, personal experiences, and things that happen in class will make it more difficult for students to cheat.

Some other ways to build in specificity:

- Have students record an answer or explain out loud how they have reached a solution
- Use specific case studies and scenarios that would require them to apply the knowledge
- Have students reflect on what they've learned and how they might use that knowledge in the future

Being specific also means explaining why you've made the choices you've made in assessments. Why isn't an exam open-book? In a world where they can look up answers with a few clicks, how does having the information stored in their memory help them? And how does it help you guide them on their learning path?

Strategy 5: Incorporate tools.

Canvas has several integrations that allow you to engage the students in different ways. Video quizzes can allow students to practice knowledge retention in low-stakes ways as they watch the lectures while Flipgrid allows you to set up a prompt that students can respond to with a video recording.

There are tools such as LockDown Browser and Turnitin which can also help deter cheating or catch students in the act. We'll talk a bit about those when we address specific forms of cheating in plagiarism and test-taking. But as already mentioned, for every anti-cheating tool, some enterprising student or group of students has discovered (and posted online) a workaround.

But once again, it helps to explain to students why these are being used. Frame it in a way that isn't "policing" them so much as trying to even the odds. Remember, one of the risks students perceive is that of a disadvantage to other students or to the system. By emphasizing that tools such as LockDown Browser and Turnitin help ensure that all students are turning in their own work and can help even the playing field, you're demonstrating that you are building a culture of fairness - not one of mistrust.

Strategy 6: Offer students choices.

When students have a choice in how they learn, they're going to be more engaged, more interested, and more motivated to complete the assignment themselves. Let's talk about a few ways to incorporate student choice into your assessments.

- Different assignment types. Use a choice board so that students can choose a few different options. For example, have students pick two out of three assignments: an essay, a quiz, and a case study, for instance. The difficulty and the assessments have to be roughly equivalent, but by offering a choice, students who feel that they are stronger at writing can skip the quiz, or vice versa.
- Different mediums and formats. Does the essay have to be written, or could they turn in an infographic, instead? Or a video presentation? Does the presentation have to be in a group, or could they do a smaller-scale project on their own?
- Different units of study or topics. Can you offer students choices in what they study within the course subject? For example, in a history course, perhaps having students choose three out of five units they will complete. Or, everyone has to complete the same units, but they can choose from different case studies or readings. Perhaps students can choose to turn in 10 out of 15 one-page reflections on the readings they do throughout the semester, or they can choose 10 problems out of 15 to work on in a math class. Not only does this benefit the student, who can choose their own learning path and prioritize topics that are meaningful to them (or even prioritize based on other time commitments), but it makes grading more engaging for you as the instructor.