As James Lang notes in his book, Cheating Lessons: Learning From Academic Dishonesty (Lang 2013) “cheating and higher education have enjoyed a long and robust history together.” If you think back to your school days, you can probably remember ways in which students cheated. AI is just the newest tool in a long list of methods for cheating. 

Lang describes cheating as “an inappropriate response to a learning environment that [isn’t] working for the student” (2). This framing reminds us that our course design is part of the equation when it comes to students’ decisions on how to complete assigned work. We can therefore take steps that will reduce the motivation to take shortcuts in our courses. Lang synthesizes the research on cheating to identify four features of a learning environment that increase the incidence of cheating:

1. An emphasis on performance; 
2. high stakes riding on the outcome; 
3. an extrinsic motivation for success; and 
4. a low expectation of success. 

Today, there may be some additional factors, including Susan Blum’s (2009) observation that the intertextuality in students’ lives may mean they don’t have the same understanding about what constitutes cheating as their professors do. Adding to possible confusion is that the use of generative AI tools is not technically plagiarism, but it can constitute academic dishonesty if the tools are used in unauthorized and opaque ways, especially when representing AI output solely as one’s own. 

Here are some strategies for fostering academic integrity by tackling the four factors that Lang describes and employing practices that the research shows helps to promote academic integrity..

Talk to Your Students About Academic Integrity

It has always been true that educating your students early and often about academic integrity is one of the keys to achieving it. This includes a discussion about your expectations for academic integrity, what that means (and looks like) in your class, and why it matters. Here are some things you should consider in that discussion:

• Educate yourself about the capabilities of various tools, including generative AI tools.
• Put a clear policy in your syllabus clarifying the meaning of academic integrity in the context of your course. Clarify also the authorized/unauthorized uses of AI tools and discuss them directly with students.
• Lead students in a dialogue about the ethical implications of passing off output not written by them as one’s own, using the code of conduct as a starting point.
• Provide opportunities for students to ask questions.
• Remind students close to the time of assessments about your expectations for academic honesty.
• Don’t take it personally! As Lang reminds us, seeing cheating as a personal affront helps no one; “a student cheats on an assignment or an exam--he does not cheat on you.” Keep this in mind when communicating with students about cheating.

Foster Intrinsic Motivation 

In the context of our classes, extrinsic motivation to learn constitutes rewards or benefits that are external to the task itself, for example, earning a good grade, making one’s parents proud or landing a competitive internship. Intrinsic motivation refers to something inherent to the task itself. Students are more likely to spend time and energy on a task, and less likely to avoid the task by cheating, when they perceive that it has value. Here are some strategies for promoting intrinsic motivation: 

• Center your course on questions or issues students care about. Help students see why it matters, why it is relevant.
• Establish an environment in which students are driven by their own questions.
• Challenge and fascinate students with authentic questions and intellectual rigor 
• Ground your assessments in a time, place, personal context and disciplinary context that is meaningful to your students. 
  • Time. Students connect course content to events, conversations, trends, or research they experience uniquely within the confines of that semester.
  • Place. Students connect to something in the local community, whether that means their dorm, their campus, or the city in which their institution is located.
  • Personal. Students consider how course content shapes or could be used to understand a specific experience in their lives.
  • Interdisciplinary. Students draw connections not only between your course content and other disciplines they have studied, but especially between your course and other specific courses they have taken, or co-curricular activities like on-campus lectures, performances, and other learning-oriented events.

Promote Self-Efficacy 

Students are more likely to persist in their learning and not resort to using cheating as a crutch if they believe they have the ability to be successful in your class. Faculty can support a student’s fledgling sense of self-efficacy which will, in turn, encourage academic honesty, with intentional messaging and actions designed for this purpose. Here are some ways to encourage a sense of self-efficacy in your students:

• Check your own assumptions. Do not fall prey to a mindset that says that certain students have what it takes to succeed in your course and others just “can’t cut it.” Often we make assumptions about student ability based on a set of skills they possess as they begin our course. Note that these differing abilities can be the result of systemic issues whereby they were simply not offered the kinds of privileges other students were provided. Beginning class by believing that all students can succeed is a good place to start.
• Encourage a growth mindset in your students. Just as we are subject to certain beliefs, students can come into our classes believing they are either “good at” something or not. Encouraging a belief that hard work and practice make a difference matters. We often suggest discussing with students the concept of neuroplasticity, that is, how the brain works in building new knowledge.
• Focus feedback on how students can grow in ability rather than on innate characteristics such as intelligence or talent.
• Make the expectations in your course transparent to students. It is essential to clarify what constitutes successful performance in your class as your view of success may differ from another faculty member’s view. 
• Encourage metacognition (thinking about how you think) and self-regulation (thinking about how you learn best) in your classes. Often, students have never been asked to reflect on their ways of learning, nor on practices that make learning work for them. The Metacognitive Awareness Inventory is a great tool for having students think about how they learn best and identify areas that need improvement. 
• Have intentional discussions with students about barriers to full engagement and learning (such as competing time demands) and help them brainstorm possible ways to manage the barrier.
• Administer a diagnostic assessment at the beginning of course or unit to determine the extent of your students’ prior knowledge. Then, lead students to resources that will help them improve areas of weakness, or if you see that the entire class is lacking in a particular area, consider teaching that concept. 

Lower stakes

Students are more likely to resort to academic dishonesty where there are few opportunities to demonstrate their command of course content. High-stakes assessments motivate students to look for ways to ensure they don’t lose out on critical points. In addition, the use of high-stakes assessments communicates that learning is a linear process that, when done correctly, culminates in a perfect performance on the first try. Faculty can create an environment less conducive to cheating by introducing no- or low-stakes assessments.

• Create an assessment protocol that includes no or low-stakes assignments.
  • Assign practice quizzes in- or out-of-class that replicate the kinds of questions that will appear on major assessments. The auto-grade function in Canvas can be used to reduce the grading burden in large sections.
  • Assign short writing assignments that prepare students for major assignments later in the semester.
  • Include classroom assessment techniques to help students see their gaps in learning.
• Break major assignments into component parts.
  • Provide opportunities for students to share elements such as their thesis statement, selected sources, outline, etc. for feedback ahead of time.
  • Ask students to submit drafts of component parts as part of the overall grade for the assignment.
• Use peer-review of lower-stakes assignments to promote self-assessment and opportunities for practice.
  • Allow students to revise and resubmit assignments or re-take quizzes.

Design Learning for Mastery

A productive and research-based approach to teaching and learning emphasizes that learning is incremental and requires trying, making errors, receiving feedback, and learning from our mistakes. We can reduce the temptation to cheat and promote more learning and retention of information by using these strategies to emphasize mastery over performance.

• Scaffold learning by providing a support framework that allows students to build up to success on major exams and assignments.
  • Break a unit of learning into smaller subunits to allow them to receive feedback that encourages continued improvement.
  • Walk students through tasks or put students in groups to discuss and plan for tasks.
  • Model a process or demonstrate the expected outcome so that students have a clear sense of your expectations.
  • Review basic vocabulary or concepts or provide resources where students can find the information if they are confronted with unfamiliar foundational content.
  • Use visual aids such as charts, models, slideshows and videos.

• Provide greater student autonomy.
  • Establish clear learning objectives for the students and then give them choices in how they could best meet the learning objectives.

• Engage students in collaborative learning.
  • Use technologies such as Poll Everywhere or Kahoot to test student knowledge during class, and have them discuss answers with a partner.
  • Invite students to complete a quiz on their own and then to compare answers with a group of peers.

• Allow students to self-assess.
  • Ask students to apply the grading rubric for an assignment to their own work.
  • Use peer review to help build students’ ability to self-assess.
  • Use exam or assignment wrappers to promote self-reflection

• Modify your grading schema.
  • Consider “ungrading”.
  • Reflect improvement in your grading schema.
  • Consider a point-based schema that allows choice in assessments.  
  • Use specifications grading.