Addressing 6 Key Areas of Student Need: Strategies for Academic Integrity

Promoting academic integrity begins with addressing the core needs of your students. The strategies below are organized around six key areas of student needs, offering actionable steps and a variety of links to resources to help you support student success, all while fostering a culture of trust and fairness.

1. Students need to know what is expected.

• Make expectations clear, being careful not to assume that students already understand what you want (different instructors do handle things differently).
• Provide syllabus statements (see sample statements re: GenAI use) and other specific instructions on assessments.
• Recommend or require completion of the Academic Integrity Tutorial, updated in 2024.

2. Students need to know how to do what is expected.

• Teach (or provide resources or referrals) for learning the skills that matter most in your course. 
• Point students to resources on citation and paraphrasing, on collaborating appropriately, on using GenAI only as permitted, or on getting study skills help. 

3. Students need to value what they are learning and how their learning is being assessed. 

• Provide information about the purpose of the learning and assessment tasks, and rationale for the academic integrity expectations that are in place. 
• Make connections to students’ future lives whenever you can, as this motivates many students to invest their own time and effort. 
• Design assessments in ways that resemble real-world applications. 
• Encourage academic integrity through intentional assessment design. 

4. Students need to feel a connection to their instructors. 

• Build relationships with your students. When students feel known and respected by their instructors, academic misconduct is less likely, in part because they feel they can ask questions. 
• Don’t focus only on potential penalties for academic misconduct, as this damages the relationship and makes students afraid to ask questions. 
• Normalize help-seeking and question-asking. 
• Tell success stories about past students. 
• Describe why you care, personally, about students learning what you are teaching and getting meaningful feedback from assessments. 

5. Students need to believe that the rules will be followed and enforced. 

• Set a constructive tone early. Address errors that look like academic misconduct as early as possible, allowing students the chance to self-correct and learn from mistakes before matters are more serious 
• Be transparent about what you do to secure assessments.  oing this brings students confidence that the assessment will be fair and that it is worth it to maintain academic integrity. 
• Assure students that you are ready to respond to suspected academic misconduct by following the academic misconduct regulations. 
• Help students imagine what it will be like to get a request from you to talk about suspected academic misconduct. 

6. Students need to manage pressure and choose good coping strategies. 

• Reinforce expectations as assessment dates get closer, and advise on options when students are under pressure (see a communication plan that spans the Winter 2025 term). 
• Help structure and pace students’ time management for larger assignments by requiring drafts or staged elements.  ast minute panic can lead some students to cheat. 
• Remove uncertainty about the nature of tests and exams, as uncertainty about how to prepare can lead some students to cheat. 
• Point students to resources including Student Wellness and Academic Advising. Often students are trying to cope with other larger issues and academic misconduct becomes a risk they are willing to take. 
• Consider what flexibility you can provide on due dates as a strategy for helping students avoid academic misconduct temptations. 

More Information

To learn more about policy, resources, and strategy related to academic integrity at USask, visit the USask Academic Integrity page.

If you have questions or would like help with addressing academic integrity concerns in your course, get in touch with the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning (GMCTL).

^{Title image credit: USask on Flickr}

This resource is shared by Susan Bens of the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning (GMCTL), University of Saskatchewan, under a CC BY-NC-SA license.