Reducing Academic Violations

Paper & Presentation Assignments 

• Show the Microsoft Word References demonstration video or share this video tutorial during your first class meeting and reinforce to students that plagiarism will not be tolerated.
• Remind students that rough drafts must still include proper citation method.
• Define what citation method should be used for assignments in your class.
• Provide detailed directions for each assignment, explicitly stating the citation expectations. This is particularly important for oral assignments, power point presentations and other multi-media work where a student may not be as familiar with appropriate citation.
• If you suspect plagiarism, ask a student to bring in copies of their sources to you and/or a rough draft of the paper.
• Clarify to students that recycling old papers is NOT allowed without approval from the faculty member.
• Require electronic submission of assignments. This provides additional information to you about the date the paper or presentation was created and last updated. 
• Remind students any suspected case of plagiarism WILL be referred to the SAA office for accountability proceedings.
• For presentations, remind students that images, charts and graphs must have citations and be included in any bibliography. This is also applicable to multi-media, such as songs, movie clips, You Tube videos, etc.

Testing

• Establish a standard test taking procedure from the first test and consistently use this during the semester. This should include taking attendance.
• Provide explicit testing instructions on each examination. This affirms your expectations to students each test period.
• Utilize proctors to observe students during testing. Meet with all proctors prior to the examination and provide them your testing expectations and procedure in writing. This will help ensure proctors know what is expected of them and the students.
• Hand out multiple versions of each exam OR make it appear that there are multiple versions. This can be done by using four different colors of paper for each testing period, creating the illusion there are four distinct versions of the examination. This visual cue helps dissuade students from looking at their neighbors’ paper.
• Try not to reuse exams from prior semesters. Students can easily get a hold of exams from former students or the web.  Access to prior exams can provide an unfair advantage and be used as a crib sheet for current students.
• Review each test.  Even if the examination is graded electronically, collect the question sheets and look over each one to see if there are abnormalities. For example, if a group of students are cheating together on an exam, they might write their answers largely to the side of each question, so that a neighbor can read it, before they transfer the answer to a Scantron. Reviewing the test and questions can help in identifying cheating patterns.
• Require students to turn in all scratch paper used during the exam. Date stamp them and retain until the end of the semester.
• Disallow cell phones and Smartphones from use during the exam. This practice discourages potential high tech cheating.

 For more information, download the Academic Integrity Tool Kit for Faculty & Instructors. If you have any issues accessing the content in this document, please contact [email protected].