Practicing Academic Integrity
Making Informed Academic Decisions
Practicing academic integrity requires making thoughtful decisions about how you complete your academic work. This can be challenging when students face competing priorities, time constraints, pressure to perform well academically, uncertainty about expectations, or fear of failure. The following strategies may help you evaluate situations, make informed decisions, and avoid common pitfalls.
When You’re Not Sure
Students often encounter situations where expectations are unclear. Before using a resource, collaborating with another student, using AI, consulting an online source, or seeking outside assistance, ask yourself:
- Has my instructor specifically permitted this?
- Does this work represent my own knowledge and understanding?
- Am I receiving assistance that could provide an unfair academic advantage?
If you are unsure, ask your instructor before proceeding.
Remember our definition of academic integrity? To practice integrity, you can start by asking yourself three questions:
- Is this my own work?
- Does this work represent my knowledge and understanding of the course content?
- Am I only using authorized resources when completing the work?
If you answered “no” to any of these, you are likely not completing your academic work with integrity. If you are not sure about a particular aspect, you have a responsibility as a college student to figure out how to get clarification.
Strategies
There are a number of strategies you can use to practice integrity and avoid engaging in academic misconduct. Click each card to learn more about each strategy.
Students struggling with a difficult course, feeling uninterested or disengaged with course content, or perhaps are concerned about an academic disadvantage where they believe other students are engaged in misconduct, may be tempted to minimize academic misconduct in the moment. It is important to remember that practicing academic integrity helps develop habits that support learning, professional responsibility, and ethical decision-making.
