News

Editorial: Academic Integrity and the Role of the Office of the Ombudsperson for Students  

An editorial for the Academic Integrity Digest by Shirley Nakata and Cindy Leonard  

Students who come to the Office of the Ombudsperson for Students are facing diverse sets of challenges in their university life, often compounded by personal circumstances. It is common for us to get questions about academic integrity or how to navigate the academic misconduct process. The hypothetical scenario below is an example of a typical student who might access support from the Ombuds Office.  

Kai was a first-year international student living away from home for the first time. They struggled, became depressed and increasingly detached from their studies. In early December, Kai learned that their grandfather had suddenly died. Kai had a major assignment coming due but worried about approaching their instructor to ask for an extension. They handed in the assignment, including excerpts copied from various websites, with only one general citation.   

The instructor noticed the copied portions and asked Kai to explain. Kai shared their story and asked for a chance to re-write the assignment. While sympathetic, the instructor thought that she had no choice but to assign a grade of 0 and refer the case to the Dean’s Office, as any special consideration would be unfair to the other students. After all, Kai had broken the rules.   

The Office of the Ombudsperson for Students is independent, impartial and confidential. We help students navigate campus-related fairness concerns. The Ombuds Office is not influenced by the university, does not take sides and does not share information unless authorized to do so. We help students explore options, identify resources, and problem-solve constructively. Our sound, practical advice empowers students to advocate for themselves. 

Continue reading “Editorial: Academic Integrity and the Role of the Office of the Ombudsperson for Students  “

Profiles: Q&A with UBCV and UBCO Student Partners

We are pleased to highlight a few examples of how students serve as active partners in academic integrity.  

 
Q&A with AMS Academic and University Affairs Office, 2022-2023 at UBC Vancouver: Advocating for academic integrity on campus


What is your role in supporting academic integrity? 

Our office collaborated with the Academic Integrity Hub this year to curate events for Academic Integrity Week (October 17 – 21, 2022), including hosting a campaign booth on October 19th, the International Day of Action Against Contract Cheating. At our booth we raised awareness of different resources for students, including the Academic Integrity Hub, UBC Ombudsperson, and the AMS Advocacy Office. We also collected student responses to the question of “What does academic integrity mean to you?” and shared these with the Academic Integrity Hub to support the development of their programs. 

Continue reading “Profiles: Q&A with UBCV and UBCO Student Partners”

The Opportunities of ChatGPT

An editorial for the Academic Integrity Digest

ChatGPT: It’s the subject of social media posts, institutional emails, and click-bait news stories that prophesize the rise of the machines and the death of essays, word problems, and the social contract in general. If a software can identify language patterns, pass standardized tests, and produce intelligible (if not always accurate) responses in grammatically-correct prose, how can we know who – or, rather, what – is the source of a student’s work? Will AI – that is, artificial intelligence – totally undermine our attempts to foster AI, as in, academic integrity? Or, does its arrival instead present us with opportunities?

Even this early in ChatGPT’s lifecycle, it is clear that language generating artificial intelligence presents significant challenges for teaching and learning that require quick – and dynamic – responses, including changes to pedagogy and policy. Faced with this challenge, some institutions have moved to ban the bots outright (as have some academic journals), while some educators have pivoted in the other direction, exploring how instructors can adopt and adapt AI as a teaching tool.

These responses – forbidding AI and embracing it – likely reflect different ends of what is instead a spectrum of options to acknowledge and address this new reality. As academic integrity scholars and educators, we see both the challenges and the potential that ChatGPT presents to engage students in reciprocal learning and productive dialogue about what it means to work with integrity.

Continue reading “The Opportunities of ChatGPT”

Teaching with Integrity: Methods and Strategies for Fostering Academic Integrity in Your Classroom or Laboratory

Date: Tuesday, January 17, 2023
Time: 10am to noon
Format: Online

Description

This event is part of the TA Institute, taking place from January 16–19, 2023.

Eligibility: The TA Institute is open to all undergraduate TAs, graduate students who are interested in teaching, and all graduate student TAs. This session is not open to general undergraduate students, staff, or faculty.

This two-hour interactive workshop will introduce graduate students to current concepts in academic integrity. We will examine misconceptions (both TAs/instructors’ and students’) about who commits academic misconduct, how, and why. We will introduce a framework for preventing academic misconduct that focuses on helping students understand the importance of acting with integrity and designing curriculum elements that encourage learners to do so. Participants will then put these methods and strategies into practice by designing materials they can use in their own teaching contexts.

Facilitators

  • Jessica Kalra, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences
  • Laurie McNeill, Professor of Teaching, Department of English Language and Literatures

Panel Session: Educative Approaches to Academic Integrity

Date: Monday, December 12, 2022
Time: 11am to noon
Format: Zoom

Description

Academic integrity is a cross-cutting concept in higher education. It affects students’ experience and learning and educators’ course and assessment design decisions. There have been many recent developments around academic integrity at UBC, including updates to the academic misconduct regulation to introduce a diversionary process and integrity plans, a new academic integrity website, and the creation of an Academic Integrity Hub in the Office of the Provost and Vice-President Academic. At the heart of these initiatives, UBC’s aim is to support and promote an educative approach to academic integrity and academic misconduct.

As a starting point, this panel will take the idea that everyone has a role to play in academic integrity. It will consider the multifaceted nature of faculty roles and responsibilities, from teaching academic integrity to supporting student wellbeing to responding to misconduct. It will touch on a wide range of topics including course design and inclusive teaching, student wellbeing, responding to misconduct and student experiences. It will also consider how academic integrity can intersect with UBC’s strategic commitments.

The panel aims to spark conversation, but also offer some practical takeaways to support a holistic approach to academic integrity in the classroom and beyond. By the end of the session, participants will be able to:

  • Understand the roles of academic integrity in higher education
  • Define an educative approach to academic integrity, both within courses and in responses to academic misconduct
  • Discover different perspectives on academic integrity at UBC
  • Relate academic integrity concepts to other topics including wellbeing and inclusive teaching

Presenters: 

  • Jaclyn Stewart, Associate Dean Academic, Faculty of Science
  • Ainsley Rouse, Academic Integrity Senior Manager, Office of the Provost and Vice-President Academic
  • Shirley Nakata, Ombudsperson for Students
  • Stefania Burke, Associate Dean Academic, Faculty of Arts
  • James Charbonneau, Associate Dean Students, Faculty of Science
  • Laurie McNeill, Professor of Teaching, Department of English Language and Literatures
  • Dana Turdy, VP Academic and University Affairs, AMS
  • Sahand Ghaffari, Advocacy Coordinator, GSS

Connecting on Academic Integrity at UBC Okanagan

Date: Thursday, December 1, 2022
Time: 11am to 12:30pm
Format: Virtual (zoom link sent to registrants one day before event)

Description

Facilitated by Dr. Anita Chaudhuri, UBC Okanagan’s Faculty Advisor on Academic Integrity, this panel session provides an opportunity to discuss issues of academic integrity across teaching and learning. It will include information about UBC Okanagan’s recently revised discipline for academic misconduct regulation and centralized supports and resources for addressing academic misconduct through an educative approach. This will be followed by a panel discussion that will introduce academic integrity in classrooms, connect academic integrity to discipline-specific concerns, and discuss strategies to perform/practice academic integrity to inform professional identity. Faculty, Teaching Assistants and students are encouraged to attend and participate in this conversation.

Check out the full details here.

Academic Integrity: New Regulation & Website

The Academic Calendar section on “Discipline for Academic Misconduct” has been updated to introduce an additional path for Faculties (Deans’ offices) to respond to allegations of academic misconduct. The new formal diversionary process includes an integrity plan in which Faculties and students can develop a plan of action to respond to academic misconduct.

At the Vancouver campus, the diversionary process will be facilitated by the Academic Integrity Hub in the Office of the Provost & Vice-President Academic. The objectives of the Hub are to support Faculties and students as they navigate this new process, and to continue to develop resources and educational materials on academic integrity and academic misconduct. Further information about how this process will be implemented at the Vancouver campus is available at https://academicintegrity.ubc.ca/diversionary-process/.

In support of the new process, we have updated the Academic Integrity website with additional resources and support information.

The diversionary process pilot for UBC Vancouver will commence with the Faculty of Science (Winter Session 2022/2023, Term 1) and is applicable to eligible cases committed in courses offered by the Faculty of Science. It is intended that further Faculties will be added through a staged rollout.

If you have any questions, please contact us via our website.

Academic Integrity Week 2022

Mark your calendars!

UBC’s second annual Academic Integrity Week is scheduled for October 17-21, 2022. The awareness week, designed for students and for instructors, will feature events and resources around academic integrity and academic misconduct.

Check out all of the information on our Academic Integrity Week page.

Dr. Laurie McNeill receives Tricia Bertram Gallant Award for Outstanding Service from the International Center for Academic Integrity

Dr. Laurie McNeill, recipient of the Tricia Bertram Gallant Award for Outstanding Service from the International Center for Academic Integrity, and a Professor of Teaching with the Department of English Language and Literatures.

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.

Academic Integrity at Celebrate Learning Week 2022

This year’s Celebrate Learning Week includes two academic integrity related events.

Encouraging Academic Integrity Through a Preventative Framework​

May 11, 2022 | 9:30 – 11:00 am | Online

Through a collaboration between the Teaching and Curriculum Development Centre (TCDC) [Langara College], the Centre for Intercultural Engagement (CIE) [Langara College] and the Academic Integrity and Student Conduct Office [Langara College], an open access toolkit for educators called “Encouraging Academic Integrity Through a Preventative Framework” was created. ​

This toolkit was developed to provide instructors with resources to reframe the conversations around what academic integrity and the expression of integrity means when viewed through the lens of identity and the intersections of culture, gender identity and ethnicity. We provide a model we call the Complexity Quadrant to examine the complexity in expression and perception of academic integrity. With this model in mind, we discuss strategies for fostering integrity and preventing contraventions of academic integrity standards through the use of Universal Design for Learning and intentional assessment design. ​

  • Jessica Kalra, Assistant Professor Teaching, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, UBC
  • Vicki Vogel, Intercultural Engagement and Curriculum Consultant [Langara College]


Register

Academic Integrity at UBCO: Where Are We and Where Are We Headed?

May 13, 2022 | 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm | Online

Since the shift to online teaching and learning, academic integrity (or dishonesty) has been on top of mind for many instructors, administrators, and students. Much has been learned during the past two years uncovering the deep complexities about this topic including issues around assessment methods, stress and wellbeing pressures, proctoring technologies, tutoring companies in an unregulated market, among others.

This panel discussion will briefly share with the audience what has been done at UBC Okanagan so far, what we have learned, and where we are headed in the short-term. The audience is encouraged to engage in the follow-up conversation with the panelists towards finding more inclusive and accessible strategies towards building a stronger culture of academic integrity.

  • Dr. Anita Chaudhuri, Assistant Professor of Teaching, and co-chair of UBCO’s Academic Integrity Advisory Group
  • Amanda Brobbel, Senior Manager, Writing and Language Learning Services
  • Jeannine Kuemmerle, Educational Consultant, TA and Student Development, Centre for Teaching and Learning
  • Laura Prada, Senior Manager Academic Integrity and Initiatives, Office of the Provost and Vice-President Academic

Register

Academic Integrity Events at 2022 CTLT Spring Institute

There will be two upcoming sessions focused on academic integrity at this year’s CTLT Spring Institute (May 30-June 3, 2022).

Let’s Talk About Academic Integrity: How, What, and When to Incorporate Academic Integrity into Your Course 

May 30, 2022 | 1 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. | Zoom 

Academic integrity is a commitment to upholding the UBC values of respect, integrity, and accountability in all academic endeavours. Academic integrity is important for activities that produce new knowledge through scholarly activities, including creative pursuits, writing, and speaking. It is also important for activities that have students demonstrate their learning through assessments and assignments. Instructors have a responsibility to work together with students and staff to promote a culture of academic integrity. This starts in the classroom, through explicitly teaching the standards of academic integrity in their discipline, and including information about academic integrity in course syllabi and coursework. 

In this panel discussion, educators will share how they bring academic integrity discussion into their classes. Panelists will be from multiple disciplines and teach writing-focused and test-focused courses. Attendees will learn about UBC’s resources for teaching academic integrity and supporting students, including the new website https://academicintegrity.ubc.ca 

This is a companion session to Academic Integrity & EDI: Rethinking Pedagogy and Practices for Inclusivity and Accessibility‚ though registration in both is not required. 

Facilitators: 

  • Ainsley Rouse, Academic Integrity Senior Manager, Office of the Provost and Vice-President Academic 
  • Jaclyn Stewart, Associate Dean Academic, Faculty of Science 
  • Dr. Laila Ferreira, Assistant Professor of Teaching, School of Journalism, Writing, Media 
  • Dr. Jessica Kalra, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences 
  • Dr. Peter Ostafichuk, Professor of Teaching, Chair of First Year Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science 
  • Dr. Brianne Orr-Álvarez, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Spanish Language Program Director, Director of FHIS Learning Centre, Department of French, Hispanic, & Italian Studies, Faculty of Arts 

Register 

Academic Integrity & EDI: Rethinking Pedagogy and Practices for Inclusivity and Accessibility 

May 31, 2022 | 11 a.m. – 12 p.m. | Zoom 

During our time together, we’ll share relevant research findings and resources, unpack some of the dominant assumptions about academic misconduct, and consider ways that we, as educators, can adopt an accessible and inclusive pedagogy of integrity in our courses that supports all in doing their work with integrity. What are the ways that policies and pedagogy may increase barriers for students, or perpetuate damaging assumptions? How do we construct an EDI-informed framework for academic integrity in courses? 

In this one-hour workshop, participants will reflect on disciplinary and classroom practices, respond to findings, share questions, and generate ideas to take back into their own teaching and departments to foster a culture of integrity (Bretag 2011) that is accessible and supportive. 

This is a proposed as a companion session to Let’s Talk About Academic Integrity: How, What, and When to Incorporate Academic Integrity Into Your Course, though registration in both is not required. 

Facilitator: 

  • Laurie McNeill, Professor of Teaching, School of Journalism, Writing, and Media 

Register

Academic Integrity issue of CTLT’s Edubytes Newsletter 

In the February edition of Edubytes, we dive into concepts around academic integrity, with a spotlight on new developments and resources at UBC. Our guest editors are Ainsley Rouse, PhD, Senior Manager Academic Integrity, Office of the Provost and Vice-President Academic; and Jaclyn J Stewart, PhD, Associate Dean Academic, Faculty of Science and Co-Chair, Academic Integrity Working Group.  

International Center for Academic Integrity

The International Center for Academic Integrity is an independent non-profit organization dedicated to cultivating cultures of integrity in academic communities. UBC holds an institutional membership to the ICAI.

The ICAI website offers a wide array of resources around academic integrity, including access to the Academic Integrity Reader and the Integrity Matters blog.

The ICAI holds an annual conference which brings together researchers and practitioners in the field of academic integrity around topics of current research, policy issues, student, institutional and practitioner experiences, and technology.

At this year’s conference, scholars and practitioners from the UBC community presented on various initiatives underway at UBC. Visit the website to learn more about the conference and this year’s program.

Academic Integrity Working Group

The Academic Integrity Working Group led the development of UBC’s new cross-campus academic integrity website. Student, faculty and staff members brought their perspectives on academic integrity to guide the concept and content creation. The result is a site that integrates support for teaching and learning academic integrity and provides support and guidance on academic misconduct.

Launch of Academic Integrity Website

We are pleased to announce the launch of the new Academic Integrity website at UBC. Teaching and promoting academic integrity and responding to academic misconduct allegations are all part of UBC’s culture of academic integrity.

Academic integrity is a commitment to upholding the values of respect, integrity, and accountability in coursework. The new website will support faculty and teaching assistants in their commitment to teaching and promoting academic integrity in their courses, and help students learn about academic integrity and uphold its values over the course of their academic careers.

Please visit the navigation above to read more about Academic Integrity at UBC.