Top 10 Tips for Instructors

Making an effort to connect with your students can go a long way for creating community and a sense of connection, which is effective for combating cheating behaviors. Help your students see you as a human being who cares, is approachable, honest, and trustworthy. The good news is this - according to research, the sense of belonging you can create by connecting with students will not just help to create a class culture of integrity, but one of inclusivity as well.  

One option for creating connections and a sense of belonging is doing an introductory video of yourself - make it more personal and not just about class. Add in your pronouns and talk about how you hope the class will connect with each other. Encourage your students to post introductory videos/ statements on a discussion board of themselves too if they're comfortable doing that. 

Creating a class Statement of Values (Word file) and/or a class Code of Ethics (Word file) with your students is key. 

It is absolutely critical that the students and instructional team get on the same page about what integrity looks like now, in a pandemic situation. Sure, you could just tell them what the rules are, but it will help you build community and garner student buy-in if you do it with your students. For the most part, they'll think the same way as you do about integrity and when they have differing ideas, you might surprise yourself and choose to adopt their ideas. 

Creating a class statement of values and/or code of ethics also helps to create an inclusive environment because you'll be creating a sense that the class is just. And, if the language of the values/ code is positive, rather than negative, students will be motivated to be inclusive and integrous. 

It is critical when you do this that you first set the groundwork: 

1. The class statement of values/ code of ethics must be aligned (and certainly not contradict) the university's Academic Integrity Policy 
2. Be clear on what is non-negotiable for you in terms of your required role to honestly and fairly evaluate student learning. For example, if you will not allow "open-notes" exams no matter what, state that up front and why - make sure to connect it to learning and/or evaluation! 
3. Make sure they understand that once the code or statement is created, everyone is accountable for reporting violations of the code or values - there's no point having values or codes if they are ignored 
4. Tell the class "We do this not because we think that the class is full of "cheaters" but because we understand that we have diverse views on integrity, especially in this new environment, and so everyone needs clearer guidance" 

You don't have to list every behavior, but certainly the ones that are commonly misunderstood by students in your class like collaboration, use of aids, plagiarism, and of course, use of artificial intelligence and other tools to which students can cognitively offload their academic work. 

Given the advancements in artificial intelligence in 2022 and 2023, be exceptionally clear! Particularly if you are using assessment techniques that are new for our students. For example, what does "open books/ notes" for tests mean? For students, it likely means "open internet", and on the internet are sites, people, and machines (think ChatGPT) who will do the work for the students. So, consider adding this phrase: 

"Open books/notes" does not mean that you can get other people - whether those people are friends, family or some "tutor" or "freelancer" on a website - or artificial intelligence to answer the exam questions for you. Stay away from sites and tools (e.g., Chegg, Coursehero, ChatGPT, CoPilot) that will do your work for you - such actions will undermine honesty and fairness, violate the trust of me and your peers, and result in an academic integrity violation and a report to the Academic Integrity Office. Remember - I care about what you know and can do, if you're learning; I don't care what someone else or something knows or can do. If you're not sure about which tools are appropriate for you to use, ask!" 

The assessments you used before the pandemic, before advances in artificial intelligence, or before the growth in the contract cheating industry may no longer be the right assessments. Learning has changed. Our students have changed. 

• Consider alternative assessment methods. There are multiple possibilities, not all of which will work for each class. The Commons provides ideas for alternative assessments. 
• Update your learning objectives. Cognitive offloading is already a thing (e.g., you write down your grocery list so you won’t forget what to buy; our students, and we, use grammar and spell checks in email and paper generating software) and what can be cognitively offloaded will expand quickly with artificial intelligence. So, rethink your learning objectives by considering – which ones are easy (or even make sense) to cognitively offload to artificial intelligence.   
  • If, as John Warner asks in his essay on artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence can do a task, should we still be asking students to do the task? And if so, why? 
  • If you have a good “why”, then think about how you can tweak the task (see earlier section on how to Design a Mastery-Oriented Class). If you don’t have a good “why”, consider assessing a new task 
• Break your assessments into parts, i.e., scaffold them. AI (so far) is not very good at scaffolding work from one assignment to another, so any time you can build writing assignments that build on prior work, it's more difficult to rely on AI to produce meaningful content. Topic proposals, intro paragraphs, drafts and revisions, any kind of scaffolding is difficult to fake with AI and it’s good for learning too!.  
• “We are going to have to start teaching our students how AI generation tools work…as part of the digital and information literacy we teach.” (Derek Bruff)   
  • Create a scaffolded assignment where the students use AI tools like faculty at the University of Mississippi have been doing.
  • Ask students to submit your prompt to ChatGPT. Tell them that they can ask ChatGPT any follow-up questions they want. Then, ask them to revise the response to meet expectations for an original scholarly work. Have them do this in track changes so you can see the original text and revisions more easily. 
  • Have the students develop a grading/ evaluation rubric for ChatGPT output and ask them to evaluate the output as an assignment. What does it do well? What does it not do well? What does it seem to miss entirely?  
  • Have the students write an essay with AI on the lesson’s topic, then debrief in peer-to-peer or class discussion  
• Consider using Oral Assessments (PDF). 
• Design assessments that reward engagement and learning, rather than outcomes, like:   
  • Move towards authentic assessments that matter (McArthur article, 2022), perhaps because they are connected to the real world and the skills/ knowledge students will need as professionals (like how to use artificial intelligence) or matters for other reasons. 
  • Teach students how to do something without AI, and then once they’ve mastered that, allow them to cognitively offload that skill to AI (Derek Bruff gives an example for Math and using Wolfram Alpha) so you can move them on to higher order knowledge and skills with the help of that cognitive offloading. 
  • Flip your classroom! Have students learn from lectures and texts outside of class, and come into class to do activities and demonstrate knowledge and skills.  
  • See other suggestions by Ryan Watkins (under the heading Get Creative with Your Assignments).

Research has shown that when people are reminded of their integrity, or just integrity standards, right before being presented with an opportunity to cheat, cheating rates are reduced. 

So, don't just talk about integrity at the beginning of the quarter when you create the Statement of Values or Code of Ethics. Use those mechanisms to provide timely reminders to students at each assessment juncture and have students reaffirm their commitment to that statement or code on each assessment. 

If you don't create a Statement or Code with your class, then at least have them affirm their integrity on each exam using these instructions (PDF). 

Also, tell students about the AI Office's Choose Integrity Contest and encourage them to enter. And advise them to sign up for our Timely Reminders service.

Staying in touch with your students throughout the quarter can help mitigate any temptations for your students to use outside services or unpermitted aids to "help" them pass the course. 

After each assessment touchpoint, check in on your students' activities (CANVAS is helpful for this). Are they logging in? Are they engaged? Does their engagement translate into mastery of the content? If not, why not? 

Use this data to reach out to students individually and/or survey the class as a whole: 

1. What's going well and what isn't? 
2. With what are you struggling? 
3. What services/ support do you need? 
4. How can I help? 

Conducting Zoom conference calls with students who appear to be struggling (IAs can do this) and conducting at least one mid-quarter check with the entire class, not only shows that you care (which can reduce cheating) but it also may actually stop a student who would have been otherwise tempted to cheat. 

Use your traditional and maybe some new practices to evaluate if an assessment was completed with integrity before you start grading: 

1. Follow-up with each student to talk through at least one of their answers. If the student can talk about it, and how they know what they know, this can indicate that they completed the exam with integrity.
   1. You can do this even in large classes.
2. Use Turnitin in Canvas for any narrative exams and check all assignments (not just those with a certain percentage similarity).
3. Use "horizontal grading" (credit: Todd Kemp) - each IA grades the same questions on all exams so that unauthorized collaboration or copying on exams can be detected (consider using GradeScope for STEM/math-based exams).
4. If using a Canvas quiz for your exam, use their metrics and logs to check for signs of integrity violations.
5. Use these tips to Detect Contract Cheating (PDF).

Our superb quality and reputation can only be sustained if faculty and students commit to academic integrity. Although we can expect more integrity violations during periods of stress, we must continue to value integrity by responding to violations in order to leverage the teachable moment for students. Otherwise, we have limited the educational benefit our students receive from their experiences with us and cheating will become more commonplace. (NOTE: Any extenuating circumstances that led to the integrity violations will be considered during the sanctioning phase of the process.) 

The Academic Senate Academic Integrity Policy requires all iinstructors to report all suspected integrity violations. You can report suspected violations using the Formal Report form. 

If you reported cheating last year, share that information with your class this year. One way to discourage students being tempted with the new opportunities to cheat is to let them know that you care about integrity and you do report integrity violations. This can help reduce this sense that they may have that "cheating is rampant" or that there are no consequences for cheating. 

• Pedagogical/ Assessment/ Culture Consultations: Ccontact tbg@ucsd.edu to reach Dr. Tricia Bertram Gallant, Director of Academic Integrity Office 
• Presentations in your Virtual Class: Submit a request for a presentation in your class by AIO students or staff 
• Presentations to your Department: Ccontact tbg@ucsd.edu to reach Dr. Tricia Bertram Gallant, Director of Academic Integrity Office