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According to academic integrity specialist Madison Hansen academic integrity is “engaging with all of our academic work and the people in our communities of learning in a way that is honest, open, and ethical” so university community members can get the most out of their time and efforts. She explains that a university community is filled with individuals who want to be and do their best, but they may find themselves navigating new experiences without the confidence to make the best choice. What design strategies could be used to ensure the academic integrity of your course? You can design instructions and assessments with some strategies in mind. Below are some tips and tools that can be used on online learning to help students uphold the academic standards of our university community.

How to Build In Academic Integrity Strategies

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• Promote Academic Integrity from the beginning of the semester and throughout. Engage students in a conversation about what it means to be ethical in their course workcoursework.

• Include an Academic Integrity statement in the syllabus that clearly outlines expectations.

• Support students in avoiding plagiarism by modeling and requiring proper citations and providing practice for paraphrasing.

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• Require annotated bibliographies in which students have summarized potential reference sources and identified how they may support the intent of the assigned research.

• Break research and writing projects into phases with activities throughout a course that culminate in a final written submission. This not only results in stronger final submissions but reduces the opportunity for submitting a final product that was created by someone else.

• Add Ouriginalplagiarism detection tools to assignments in Canvas, allowing written submissions to be checked for proper documentation and potential plagiarism.

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The Canvas discussion setting “Users must post before seeing…” prevents students from seeing anything on the discussion forum until they make their initial post. BUTBut, if the global discussion setting is checked that students may “Edit and Delete Their Own Posts” they can go around that by posting, then reading, copying other students' posts, and then editing their initial posts.

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• Use the discussion setting “Users must post before…” in conjunction with adjusting the global setting so students can’t edit their posts, and encourage students to write their thoughts prior to posting. Students that want to edit or delete their posts will need to contact the instructor.

• Rather than using a discussion as the submission venue, consider having students submit their thoughts using a file upload assignment with the Ouriginal a plagiarism tool setting selected for high-value work.

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• If the work is to be peer-reviewed via a discussion after the assignment submission, consider using due/dates and availability dates or the sequential Requirement setting for additional safeguards.

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Online learning provides more opportunities for assessing learning than one might find in most physical classrooms. By removing scheduled time limits and the physical environment, students can demonstrate their ability to perform tasks, analyze situations, solve problems, apply solutions, and innovate with their new knowledge and understanding. There are a variety of alternatives to tests when it comes time to Assess Online Learning. Here are just a few:

• Video recordings of student students performing tasks or role-playing a scenario

• Podcasts explaining concepts

• Un-essays providing provide creativity and a choice of methods to demonstrate a concept

• Creation of 3-D models of solutions or design concepts

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