About two years ago, I slipped on icy stairs after coming in from skating with my son. In the Fall, I hurt my right big toe and could not walk for a couple of days. As a result, I missed a meeting of the newly formed Academic Integrity Advisory Committee. The committee nominated me to chair in my absence (true story). And that is how I became fascinated with academic integrity, a topic that is becoming more and more fascinating with the shift to online learning.

Mintz, S. (2022, August 24). Plagiarism is a structural problem. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/plagiarism-structural-problem

Ross, S. (2021, March 17). UPEI prof develops ‘plagiarism-resistant’ online exams. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-online-plagiarism-resistent-exams-1.5954079

Wong, J. (2020, October 25). Post-secondary students call for changes to online exam rules as cheating concerns rise. CBCNews. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/post-secondary-assessment-integrity-proctoring-1.5767953

With this new generation having grown up so comfortable seeking and sharing information online, "it's really important at higher educational institutions that we're clear about what they can access, what they should access and how they should use that information," McKenzie said.

Supiano, B. (2020, October 21). Students cheat: How much does it matter? The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/students-cheat-how-much-does-it-matter

On one side are professors who consider themselves pedagogically progressive. They’ve adopted the perspective that many prominent teaching experts have been encouraging: Trust your students, and find creative ways to assess their learning. Yes, some students will cheat. That’s unavoidable, and policing them shouldn’t be the North Star of anyone’s teaching. Especially not during a crisis that has put students under tremendous pressure.

To professors on the other side, who tend to be more traditional, that advice falls flat. In some corners of a college, especially large-enrollment courses in quantitative disciplines with highly structured, sequential curricula, exams are seen as essential to learning. Cheating undermines their value. And no one seems to have figured out how to stop it.

Nothing instructors can do will eradicate cheating.

Edwardson, L. (2020, October 7). Calgary post-secondaries see rates of academic misconduct, cheating rise during pandemic. CBC News. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/post-secondary-cheating-misconduct-covid-1.5752971

"What we had beforehand were regulations and the regulations didn't require us to collect data, provide reports and so on," she said. 

Barker said in the 2018-19 school year, before the new policy came into effect, there were 400 instances of academic misconduct reported in the undergrad population, and 13 reported in the graduate population. 

But, Barker said those numbers likely under represented the reality.

"I do belive there is the possibility of underreporting people," she said. "Instructors might have wanted to try and deal with it their own way and say to students, 'you shouldn't have done this.' But we're trying to move away from that culture."

Contact North. (2020, September 24). Cheating by student of faculty: What can be done? TeachOnline.ca. Retrieved from https://teachonline.ca/tools-trends/cheating-by-student-or-faculty-what-can-be-done

Alongside of this, there must be severe penalties and a very public sharing of examples of cheating, fraud, fabrication and plagiarism so a community of teachers and students know these behaviours have consequences. Cheating and academic misconduct damages all, not just the individuals who are “caught”, including the reputation of the college or university.

Seth Godin’s blog [1] today inspired me to keep a running bibliography of academic integrity articles that appear in the mainstream news.

The posture of, “cheat if you can,” is the belief in the ends at any cost. It degrades the system, because if everyone cheats, then there is no system left.

Cheaters often brag about their exploits, because they want to normalize them.

Sophisticated competitors, the ones who really want to win, understand that cheating destroys the very thing they set out to do. Because once cheating is normalized, the winner is the person who had the guts to cheat the most and destroy the system, not the one who deserved to win. Being against cheating doesn’t mean you don’t want to compete, it means that you do

Grabish, A. (2020, August 18). University of Manitoba uses anti-cheating software to monitor remote exams. CBCNews. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/anti-cheating-software-university-of-manitoba-1.4223737

Schaffhauser, D. (2020, August 4). Instructors believe students more likely to cheat when class is online. Campus Technology. Retrieved from https://campustechnology.com/articles/2020/08/04/instructors-believe-students-more-likely-to-cheat-when-class-is-online.aspx

A report on the results, "Academic Integrity in the Age of Online Learning," stated that while 62 percent of faculty agreed that students were more likely to cheat in an online class than an in-person class, most students (95 percent) said cheating happened in both environments equally.