With the rise of online and blended courses in higher education, the question of academic integrity—and how to properly protect and assess students in virtual environments—is an increasingly frequent and important topic of concern in higher education.
Carlow University's Academic Integrity Policy is found on pages 36–39 of the 2023–2024 Undergraduate Course Catalog and pages 28–31 of the 2023–2024 Graduate Course Catalog.
Violations of Carlow University's Academic Integrity Policy include:
For more in-depth definitions of these violations and information on the Academic Integrity Hearing Procedure, please read the full policy found in Carlow University's course catalogs.
This page also includes additional resources on academic integrity, including collected readings and strategies for conceptualizing, maintaining, and encouraging academic integrity in your classroom.
The CTRL offers interactive software tools that can be utilized by instructors to prevent plagiarism and other academic integrity violations within online courses. These tools include Respondus LockDown Browser, which locks students' browsers to prevent cheating during exams and quizzes, and TurnItIn, which can detect plagiarism in students' written work. Additionally, some Nursing courses at Carlow University utilize ExamSoft, which is another software aimed at limiting students' access to outside resources during exams.
To learn more about these educational technology tools and how they can be utilized to preserve academic integrity, visit our page on Interactive Software Tools.
With the increasing prevalence of artificial intelligence and Large Language Model tools like ChatGPT, it is imperative that faculty and other professionals in higher education pay attention to the role of AI in the academic setting and the implications for academic integrity. Visit our page on AI in Higher Education to learn more about AI applications in higher education and resources for academic integrity.
James Lang wrote a series of articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education about cheating, why students cheat, and how instructors can build cheat-resistant classrooms. For the first in the series, click here.
On March 18th, 2021, The Chronicle of Higher Education hosted a virtual panel about the question of academic integrity in online courses. Per The Chronicle's description of the event:
Amid the many challenges presented by higher ed, one of the biggest is the issue of academic integrity in online learning. How prevalent have cheating and plagiarism been during the pandemic? And what can colleges do to ensure students' work is honest and fair?
To find out, The Chronicle will bring together an expert panel for a discussion of academic integrity as it stands now. Join us as we seek to answer the questions weighing on the minds of many faculty and staff members in higher ed today:
Speakers included:
In "Punishment Is Not Enough: The Moral Imperative of Responding to Cheating with a Developmental Approach," Bertram Gallant and Stephens argue that higher education has an ethical obligation to respond to 'cheating' through a developmental approach.
The International Center for Academic Integrity published a booklet describing six fundamental values of academic integrity:
As they describe it: "From these values flow principles of behavior that enable academic communities to translate ideals to action."