4. Developing Assignment Instructions

Addressing Academic Integrity

Addressing academic integrity on your assignment instruction sheets extends the strategies you are already using in-class to encourage academic integrity throughout your coursework (e.g., in-class discussions, paraphrasing practice, etc.), as discussed in chapter 3 under Promoting Academic Integrity.

Keep in mind that expectations regarding academic integrity can vary dramatically by context, depending on the discipline, level of scholarly work, type of writing, and personal preferences of individual instructors (Bens, 2022). While many institutions have developed their own standard statements to insert in academic assessments, students need explicit examples related to your specific context, assignment, and expectations (Bens, 2022).

Paired with contextualized, in-course instruction, explicitly addressing academic integrity in your assignment instructions can help reduce breaches of academic integrity by reaffirming your commitment to academic integrity and clarifying expectations that can appear ambiguous to novice researchers.

Strategies for Success

  • Convey your commitment to academic integrity while avoiding ostracizing honest students through harsh, judgmental language.
  • Provide specific examples of appropriate or inappropriate behaviour in the context of your assignment.
  • Connect appropriate and inappropriate behaviour to the learning outcomes of the assignment to explain why, in this context, certain behaviours are permissible and others are not.
  • Include links to institutional policies and tutorials, and/or customized checklists.
  • Offer to answer questions personally.
  • Provide links to academic integrity support services.

Example Statement

Before you begin, review the Academic Integrity Checklist and the Copyright and the Internet Guidelines. In class, we will explore strategies for using Generative AI tools (like ChatGPT) to brainstorm ideas, refine thesis statements, and edit paragraphs for your final draft. As you will be marked on your personal ability to analyze and synthesize findings from scholarly articles, copying and pasting an entire article summary or essay from a generative AI tool is not appropriate. If you have any questions about what is appropriate for this project, please speak with me or the Tutoring Centre before submitting your work.

Helpful Resources

Instructor’s Educational Resources[1]
A list of resources from various universities and colleges. Collected by the International Centre for Academic Integrity.

 

  1. Instructor's Educational Resources: https://academicintegrity.org/instructors-educational-resources ↵

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Designing Research Assignments that Enhance Student Research Skills Copyright © 2024 by Kathleen Oakey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.