Quick Link: Reporting an Incident

Academic Misconduct Defined

Academic misconduct, in its most basic form, is gaining or attempting to gain a grade, degree, or other academic accomplishment by any means other than through your own work. The formal policy states, “No student shall engage in any activity that involves attempting to receive a grade by means other than honest effort, and shall not aid another student who is attempting to do so.” Additional information about faculty, student and administrative responsibilities is available in documentation about policy and procedures.

Managing Incidents of Academic Misconduct

The Office of Academic Integrity and Student Conduct (OAISC) is responsible for ensuring that students comply with and understand university policies related to academic integrity and student conduct by promoting student learning and development. Moreover, this office will facilitate a process by which evidence of academic misconduct is reviewed, a determination is made about misconduct (or not), and the appropriate disciplinary action is taken (if any). This process begins with an Allegation of Academic Misconduct by an instructor, which is submitted via an online report submission portal, and ends with a determination by OAISC that is reported to the student, instructor and the Associate Dean of Student Affairs.

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Instructor Responsibility

As shown in Fig. 1 above, the Instructor is responsible for reporting incidents of academic misconduct to OAISC for a determination, and issuing a course grade based on their evaluation of the situation. They may take into consideration the findings of OAISC for determining the level of trust they have in the student work. The key word here is trust, and faculty are left to contemplate what can be considered a trustworthy indicator of achievement.

Important: it is not the role of the instructor to issue a (bad) grade as a disciplinary measure. Responsibility for disciplinary action falls on the administration.

Administrative Responsibility

Also shown in Fig. 1 above, the Administration is responsible for determining the appropriate disciplinary action in consideration of any previous incidents, and uses an Academic Integrity Review Board (AIRB) to support appeals by students. Examples of disciplinary actions include warnings, educational sanctions, suspension and dismissal.

Best Practices to Avoid Incidents of Academic Misconduct

Faculty and students alike should strive to achieve clarity on what is and what is not academic misconduct in a course. The biggest cause of reported incidents is confusion over what is permitted and what is not permitted on a particular assignment. For example, what is permissible on an exam might be different from what is permissible on a lab report or a homework assignment. While course policies are a responsibility of the faculty, students need to contribute by asking for clarification whenever there is doubt and using common sense about what can be construed as cheating.

Faculty are advised to place a copyright mark on all course materials that can be accessed online by students or the public. Educational resource platforms such as Chegg and CourseHero are less likely to approve the posting/sharing of your course materials if a copyright is clearly marked.

Faculty are advised to monitor online educational resource platforms such as Chegg and CourseHero. If any copyrighted materials are illegally posted, notify the host and ask to have it taken down.

Responding to a Chegg Incident

Students may pose exam questions on Chegg in real-time during exams. If this occurs, contact Chegg and request a report. Chegg will provide email addresses, IP addresses, user IDs, and access dates and times to verified instructors.

Review the Chegg data and use it to prepare and submit a report of the incident to OAISC for review and possible disciplinary action. For correspondence and follow-up questions, a good point of contact is Brittany Kim (brittkim@uci.edu).

Strategies to Deter Academic Misconduct

Preventing academic misconduct isn’t possible, but steps can be taken to deter it. Examples:

Make sure there is oversight during all exams. Surveys suggest even a low level of oversight, such as visibility on zoom through camera monitored by instructors, will deter many students from the temptation to cheat.

Inform students that the university has investigative powers to identify those who use tools like Chegg in ways that violate standards of academic honesty, and that disciplinary action will be pursued.

Inform students that all incidents of academic misconduct are recorded on student records and affect eligibility for certain honors and awards.

Inform students that all second-time violations are kept on student records for seven years after graduation, and are visible to employers and graduate schools that request student records.

Let students about their rights, responsibilities and processes related to managing student conduct which can be found here and here.