Academic Integrity: Faculty and Staff Guide

How to Prevent Students’ Academic Misconduct

The most helpful tip to prevent academic misconduct is to proactively communicate with your students. Students come from disparate schools and circumstances, and something that may have been acceptable in one location may be considered academic misconduct in another.

Consider how you can communicate your expectations at the beginning of your class and throughout the semester. Here are some tips:

  • Make your expectations clear on your syllabus and on assignments.
  • Create an academic integrity module in your course’s D2L shell.
  • Consider assigned seating during exams.
  • Invite (or require) your students to sign a document stating they know your definitions of academic misconduct, agree to abide by the standard, and understand the consequences of non-compliance.
  • Sometimes, academic misconduct is the unfortunate result when a struggling student tries anything and everything to get a passing grade in a class. Encourage students to visit the university resources listed in the Student Information section of this webpage.

Helping Students Avoid Academic Misconduct

Navigating academic integrity can sometimes feel tricky—what counts as collaboration, proper citation, or acceptable use of technology isn't always obvious. At East Texas A&M, we are here to guide students in understanding where the line is drawn and how to stay on the right side of it. This guide addresses key areas such as group work, the responsible use of artificial intelligence, and tools like Turnitin.com, providing clear expectations and practical tips to help students succeed with honesty and integrity.

Group Work

Students may have come from schools where group work was acceptable for all assignments. As such, they may not see or understand the harm of collaborating/corroborating on coursework or exams.

Group Work Guidelines

  • At the start of the semester and throughout the course, make your expectations clear about acceptable forms of group work for your course assignments, projects or exams.

  • If someone in a group commits academic misconduct, the entire group could also be held responsible for it.

It is important to document clearly who contributes what parts to the joint project to understand what each group member is doing and how they acquire the material they provide.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI is reshaping higher education, and acceptable use of AI in one class may count as cheating in another. East Texas A&M acknowledges that there are legitimate uses of AI, chatbots, or other software that have the capacity to generate text or suggest replacements for text beyond individual words. The instructor of the course determines legitimate uses.

AI Rules and Guidelines

Be clear with your students about acceptable uses of AI in your classes and consider how you might differentiate between acceptable uses of AI for various projects. Any use of AI software must be documented.Any undocumented use of AI software constitutes academic dishonesty (plagiarism).Individual instructors may disallow the use of AI software for individual assignments or the entire course. Students should be aware of such requirements and follow their instructors' guidelines.If no AI guidelines are provided, the student should assume that the use of AI is disallowed.

Students are fully responsible for the content of any assignment they submit, regardless of whether they used AI in any way. This includes cases when AI plagiarized another text or misrepresented sources.

Turnitin.com

East Texas A&M subscribes to Turnitin.com, and you should see information about this function in your course D2L shells. Consider how you might use this tool and encourage students to use it to avoid inaccurate resource citations and other forms of plagiarism in your classes. Unauthorized materials may include anything or anyone that gives a student assistance and has not been specifically approved in advance by the instructor.

Other Guidelines to Help Students Avoid Academic Misconduct

Please speak to your students about these points at the beginning of each semester. Students must avoid:

  • Abusing or misusing computer access or gaining unauthorized access to information in any academic exercise.
  • Cheating, which is defined as intentionally using or attempting to use unauthorized materials, information, notes, study aids, or other devices or materials in any academic exercise.
  • Helping another student commit an act of academic dishonesty, either intentionally or knowingly.
  • Fabrication, which involves making up data or results, and recording, reporting or submitting them.
  • Falsification, which includes manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.
  • Forgery, which means creating a fictitious document or altering an existing document, with the intent to deceive or gain advantage.
  • Multiple submissions, which means submitting substantial portions of the same work (including oral reports) for credit more than once without authorization from the class instructor for which the student submits the work.
  • Plagiarism, which is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit.

Reporting Student Academic Misconduct

Faculty and instructors should submit a form for every suspicion of academic misconduct.This helps the Division of Academic Affairs monitor data on all allegations and confirmed cases of academic misconduct so that we can provide information and adjust resources accordingly.

Before submitting the form, faculty and instructors should meet with the student. Doing so will help provide more information before submitting the form. It also equips the university with additional information if the student decides to appeal the allegation.

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