Academic Integrity and Exams

See the HCC Academic Integrity Committee Sharepoint site for resources on academic integrity. See also the LibGuide: PlagiarismRx: Ensuring Academic Integrity.

Below are some tips and best practices for helping ensure academic integrity on your exams, including alternatives to proctored exams.

Definition of Academic Integrity

From the Ybor City Campus Learning Council:

Students who demonstrate academic integrity use their own thoughts and efforts
when performing academic work and acknowledge any contributions or
collaboration. Academic integrity is critical to Hillsborough Community College’s
mission, vision, and values, and it is the responsibility of all faculty, staff, and
students of the college. Each person must consciously choose to uphold this
important and vital responsibility.

Academic Integrity in Practice

Actively practicing the principles of academic honesty can be accomplished in
many ways. Below is a list of several examples of academic integrity in practice.

• Submit ONLY work based on your own understanding of the
  materials/sources authorized by your instructor AND on your own efforts in
  gathering information used to complete an assignment.
• Credit any sources used, and be knowledgeable of the definition of
  plagiarism so that you may avoid it. Plagiarism is intentionally or
  unintentionally using someone else’s words, ideas, phrases, sentences,
  pictures, or other original material whether published or unpublished in print
  or online without acknowledging its source. Examples of plagiarism include,
  but are not limited to: acquiring or buying a term paper or essay and
  submitting it as your own; cutting and pasting sentences from a website, or
  paraphrasing somebody else’s ideas, theories or opinions without
  acknowledging the original author or creator of the work. Plagiarism also
  applies to other forms of creative expression such as music, media, and
  visual arts. One can also self-plagiarize by submitting the same or
  substantially similar assignment more than once.
• Protect the integrity of your assignments, work and/or exams by not sharing
  or allowing others to copy your work.
• Use only permissible materials to prepare and complete work. For example,
  avoid the use of an unauthorized copy of an exam.
• Obtain a clear understanding from instructors about collaborating with
  others. This understanding will give you a set of rules and expectations to
  follow when working with classmates to complete group assignments.
• Provide personal information as required by the college that is accurate and
  true to the best of your knowledge.
• Report violations of academic honesty to your supervisor or dean.

Benefits of Academic Integrity

Maintaining academic integrity has college-wide and personal benefits. Specifically,
practicing academic integrity:

• protects the reputation of the college. Earning a degree from an institution
  recognized as having strong academic values and principles can significantly
  influence the employability of its students in a positive manner. Reputation
  can also impact the support the college receives from local, state, and federal
  Entities.
• supports the college’s mission to deliver opportunities that empower
  students to achieve their educational goals and become contributing members
  of the local community and a global society. In other words, the practice of
  academic honesty encourages students to be responsible for their own
  learning and promotes a sense of pride in one’s own accomplishments which
  in turn can help students in attaining personal and career aspirations.
• ensures fairness for all students. Earned grades accurately reflect the effort
  put forth by each student and is not a measure of someone else’s work.
• promotes the practice of academic honesty as it provides examples as well as
  sets a standard for others to follow.

Consequences of Academic Dishonesty

Students who engage in academic dishonesty, including plagiarism, collusion,
cheating, or other dishonest behavior, may be subject to disciplinary action, up to
and including expulsion from the College.

Alternatives to Timed, Proctored Exams

Consider giving your students take-home style open book exams or writing assignments or projects. You can use TurnItIn if you wish to check any submitted papers for plagiarism. Here are some tips for reducing cheating on take-home exams and making writing assignments more plagiarism-resistant.

See this handout on Unproctored Assessments for ideas on alternatives to timed, proctored exams.

You can also vaccinate against cheating with authentic assessment, which involves students performing real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills. See this Authentic Assessment Toolbox for several examples and tips on creating authentic assessment activities, including rubrics to assess them.

Best Practices with Timed, Proctored Exams

Before the Exam

• Include your expectations and the academic integrity policy in your syllabus, as well as discussing this early on with your students during class. You might share this data on the negative impact of homework copying, for example.
• Explore some of the reasons why students might cheat on your exam.
• For multi-section courses, use common exams and grading systems. See Course Coordination for best practices.
• Change the questions on your exams each semester, as students may copy or share questions with other students.
• If using a Canvas quiz for the exam, shuffle the answers, create question groups, and use formula questions to reduce the chance of copying answers.
• As a general rule of thumb, if you can google the answer (or use an app like Photomath to solve a math problem), it shouldn’t be on the exam.
• Include higher order questions on your exams, beyond just memorization and ‘plug and chug’ type questions.
• Help students prepare for the exam by discussing the test beforehand and providing practice questions and/or a study guide. Practice exams can improve student performance and retention.
• Have students work in pairs or small groups on practice problems during class instead of only watching you solve problems or working on them solo from home.
• Consider doing exercises with your students to reduce their test anxiety and stress. Active learning exercises during class can not only improve student learning but reduce test anxiety.
• Include exam wrapper questions on your exam, such as how many hours did they study for the exam or what grade they predict. This also gives you something to discuss with individual students afterward who may have struggled on your exam.

During the Exam

• Conduct the exam in-class on paper if possible. Walk around the room during the exam and sit students by number to reduce the chances of cheating.
• If the exam is remotely proctored, set the exam to record the webcam and screen and instruct your students to point the webcam at their work area, as well as signing their handwritten work and holding it up to the webcam before scanning it in and submitting it. If students do not need to scan and submit a PDF file (all the questions are completed on-screen in Canvas), you can turn on additional options to reduce the chances of cheating.
• Consider trying the two-stage exam technique. Students take a quiz or exam first individually, and then a second time in a group. This can prevent struggling students from falling further and further behind, since they can learn from each other the things they missed in the first stage. And you don’t have to spend so much time reviewing the exam yourself. Here’s a video of it in action, as well as more tips for success.

After the Exam

• See the bottom section for advice on how to handle suspected academic integrity violations.
• Proactively reach out to meet with or email students who struggled on your first quiz or exam or assignment. In the Canvas gradebook, you can Message Students Who scored poorly, for example. Meet with the students one-on-one or in small groups.
• See How can I help struggling students turn it around? for more tips on helping students who did poorly on your exam or assignment.
• Have students review the exam in groups, rather than only watching you solve problems.

How to Accommodate Students Who Need Extra Time

There are 2 steps to giving one or more students extra time:

• After the quiz is published, click the ‘Moderate this Quiz’ link on the top right, find the row with the student who needs extra time, click the pencil icon on the far right, and set the extra time. See: Once I publish a timed quiz, how can I give my students extra time?
• Secondly, there is an issue – when the ‘Until Date’ and time for the quiz is reached, all quizzes not yet completed will be automatically submitted, even for those students you gave extra time. So that means you have to edit the quiz, scroll to the bottom, click the Add button, enter the student’s name, and give that student their own due date, available from date, and extended Until Date. See: How do I assign a quiz to an individual student?

Give Your Students a Practice Proctored Exam First

We recommend you have your students try completing a practice proctored exam before the first real one, so that they can test that everything works and get used to the experience.

Sending an Announcement to Your Students with Guidance for the Proctored Exam

For any instructions for your exam, you should send an announcement to your students with that information, as the instructions inside the exam will not be visible until after the exam has started.

Refer your students to support resources if they need help using the proctoring tool.

In your message to students, tell them to contact you immediately if they don’t have a webcam or for whatever reason cannot complete the proctored exam.

Troubleshooting Student Issues During the Exam

Please stay by your email during the proctored exam so that you can quickly respond to any issues that may arise.

In your guidance for students, show students how to contact support, but for some issues, only you can help. An example is if a student just cannot get the proctoring tool to work despite using Chrome and installing the extension, or a student finding out their webcam is not working and requesting an access code to bypass the tool.

Handling Academic Integrity Violations

Refer to the college handbooks and policies for information about handling academic integrity violations, as well as the HCC Academic Integrity Committee Sharepoint site.