Congratulations to Dr. Laurie McNeill, who received the Tricia Bertram Gallant Award for Outstanding Service from the International Center for Academic Integrity in March 2022! Dr. McNeill is a Professor of Teaching with the Department of English Language and Literatures, and was lead investigator on the TLEF-funded project “Our Cheating Hearts?: Changing the Conversation through Academic Integrity Curriculum in First-Year Programs.” We spoke with Dr. McNeill to learn more about her work in academic integrity.
Dr. McNeill’s time as Director of First-Year Programs for the Faculty of Arts sparked her passion for academic integrity. The role included holding “absolutely transformative” meetings with students who had been reported for suspected academic misconduct. Through this process, Dr. McNeill says, she “realized really vividly that we as an institution, and we as instructors, were failing to provide students with education in something that we then punished them for not knowing about.”
Further conversations with Dr. Stefania Burk, Dean pro tem for the Faculty of Arts, and then Associate Dean, Academic, refined Dr. McNeill’s focus on academic integrity as opposed to academic misconduct. Whereas academic misconduct is “a disciplinary, punishment model,” Dr. McNeill views academic integrity as aspirational. Highlighting academic integrity in teaching “is about inviting [students] to live up to their potential,” as well as the potential of the scholarly communities they inhabit.
The “Cheating Hearts” project, funded by Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund (TLEF), began as a pilot project amongst a small group of faculty members in first-year Arts programs. Dr. McNeill was pleasantly surprised that the project did not necessitate major changes in teaching and learning; instead, they “could tweak few things [they] were already doing, and it would have transformative results.” As a result of the pilot’s success, it was implemented across first-year Arts programs. Dr. McNeill estimates that between 5,000 and 6,000 students per year now engage with the academic integrity instruction developed through the project.
In addition to her work within the UBC community, Dr. McNeill also works in academic integrity on a national and international level, including her contribution to the recent book Academic Integrity in Canada and her membership on the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education’s (STLHE) new Committee on Academic Integrity and Contract Cheating. She points to the COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying shifts in teaching and learning as expanding the conversation on academic integrity. This increased engagement, Dr. McNeill says, offers multiple benefits, including “opportunities to learn from different approaches, to be abreast of new developments, and to be thinking collectively about ways we can be doing things better.”
Academic integrity ultimately strengthens faculty and student interactions and accomplishments, contributing to an open and engaged scholarly community. Dr. McNeill highlights the importance of understanding students’ lived experience: “diverse experiences of life, of culture, of education” that impact their knowledge and understanding of academic integrity.
“We have an opportunity not only to help them, but also to do some learning ourselves when we make this something that we teach explicitly.”
Story by Colby Payne.