Academic integrity is a hot topic in all of education settings. In an online setting it will become an even more hot topic as the virtual school debate continues. Parents, students, politicians, brick & mortar teachers will all ask: "What procedures do you have in place to ensure the student is doing their own work?"
We need to be prepared for this. It is not a matter if it will happen, but when. We are dealing with teenagers and we need to be able to help them learn important lessons.
For academic integrity to remain constant we must do the following:
1. Have clear expectations. When a student begins the class we discuss Academic Integrity, what it means, how to uphold it, and consequences when it is broken.
2. These discussions need to be able to be referenced to academic integrity material in our courses and departments. Students should see it clearly written in the syllabus what academic integrity is and how it will be upheld.
3. We must educate students on how to cite, how to research, and how to be a good steward of information.
4. When we cross the bridge of academic integrity issues we must be prepared. Do we as an institution use a method such as turnitin.com to screen the documents students submit to catch plagiarized copies? Being a virtual school do we maintain a database of all student material that can be used to run up against student work, so that when friends are completing the same courses they are not passing around a flash drive of all the material already completed? We must ask ourselves what are we doing to be proactive to ensure Academic Integrity is upheld in our institution and as a deterrent to students. Repercussions for breaking the trust need to be clearly stated. Obviously a first offense is a learning opportunity for the student and parent, but what are the requirements on multiple infractions?
We as teachers on a new forefront of education must have these plans in place and hold our students to the highest standards of integrity.
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