Academic Integrity Faculty Guide

This faculty-facing guide supports Vector Technology Institute (VTI) instructors in setting clear academic integrity expectations, preventing common problems, documenting concerns fairly, and supporting student learning. Use it for standards, attribution, misconduct, evidence, and response. For assignment-level design and responsible generative AI use, see the Ethical AI Integration in Instruction guide.

What Academic Integrity Means

Academic integrity means participating honestly in learning and assessment, presenting work accurately, and giving credit for the ideas, words, data, code, images, and other contributions used. Faculty should make expectations visible before an assessment begins and apply them consistently across students and sections.

Common Integrity Risks

• Plagiarism: presenting another person’s work, words, structure, or ideas as original without appropriate attribution.
• Fabrication or falsification: inventing or changing sources, data, results, records, quotations, or evidence.
• Unauthorized collaboration: receiving or giving assistance beyond what the assignment permits, including sharing completed answers or code.
• Contract cheating or impersonation: arranging for another person or service to produce work or complete an assessment.
• Citation and attribution problems: missing citations, misleading paraphrases, incomplete reference details, or uncredited use of images, code, data, and media.
• Misuse of AI: using an AI tool in a way that conflicts with the assignment instructions, submitting generated material as personal work when disclosure is required, or relying on invented citations or analysis.

Separate poor practice from deliberate misconduct

A weak paraphrase, missing page number, incorrect reference, or confused collaboration rule may reflect limited instruction or misunderstanding rather than deliberate deception. Review the assignment instructions, the student work, the available evidence, and the student explanation before drawing a conclusion. The distinction should inform the support offered and the response taken, while still addressing the problem clearly.

Preventive Assignment and Course Design

Make expectations explicit

• State what counts as individual work, permitted collaboration, acceptable source use, and required citation style.
• Set assignment-specific AI permissions in plain language, including whether disclosure is required.
• Explain how evidence, drafts, code, data, images, and quotations should be credited.
• Use a rubric that rewards reasoning, source use, process, and reflection rather than polished output alone.

Build a visible learning process

• Use topic proposals, search plans, source notes, annotated bibliographies, outlines, drafts, and short reflections where appropriate.
• Include checkpoints that let faculty correct citation, paraphrasing, research, or collaboration problems before final submission.
• Use local, current, or student-specific applications when they strengthen learning, not simply as a detection tactic.

Teach before evaluating

Provide examples of acceptable paraphrase, quotation, citation, collaboration, and disclosure. Make research and writing support easy to find, and ensure that students can ask questions about expectations before an assessment is submitted.

Source Use, Citation, and Attribution

Students should be able to identify which claims come from a source, which ideas are their own, and how each source can be checked. A citation is not a substitute for understanding: faculty should also look for accurate representation of the source, meaningful paraphrase, and a reference trail that another reader can follow.

• APA Formatting and Citation (7th Edition) supports citation, reference, quotation, and attribution expectations.
• Research Skills Guide supports source discovery, evaluation, note-taking, and responsible use.
• Annotated Bibliography supports source summaries, evaluation, and tracing how evidence is used.
• How to Write a Research Paper supports planning, evidence integration, drafting, and revision.
• Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Articles Library Guide supports checking the status and suitability of scholarly sources.

Evidence and Documentation Principles

When a concern arises, document the specific assignment requirement, the relevant passage or item, the source or comparison used, and the steps taken to give the student an opportunity to respond. Keep records factual, confidential, proportionate, and limited to what is needed for a fair review.

• Keep the assignment brief, rubric, permitted-use instructions, and relevant course guidance.
• Preserve drafts, version history, research notes, source lists, or process evidence when they are available and relevant.
• Ask the student to explain the argument, sources, data, code, or process when clarification is needed.
• Do not treat a writing-style difference, an AI score, or a similarity percentage as a conclusion by itself.

Screening tools are indicators, not proof

Free comparison and AI-detection tools can produce false positives, miss copied or generated material, and change their results over time. If used, they are preliminary indicators only. They should prompt careful review and conversation, never automatic proof of misconduct or an automatic penalty.

• Google Scholar and exact-phrase web searches can help locate possible source matches.
• DupliChecker, SmallSEOTools Plagiarism Checker, and Quetext may assist with preliminary comparison checks.
• Writer AI Content Detector and GPTZero are indicators only and should not be used as sole evidence of misconduct.

Fair, Consistent Response and Student Support

1. Review the stated requirement and the evidence against the work submitted.
2. Give the student a clear opportunity to explain the work and provide relevant process evidence.
3. Distinguish a skills or misunderstanding issue from a possible deliberate violation where the evidence supports that distinction.
4. Record the facts and follow the applicable VTI process consistently; do not promise a particular outcome in advance.
5. Connect the student with research, citation, writing, or other learning support when remediation is appropriate.

Which Guide Should I Use?

Use this Academic Integrity Faculty Guide for standards, attribution, misconduct types, evidence, documentation, fair response, and student support.

Use Ethical AI Integration in Instruction for defining acceptable AI use, disclosure, verification, privacy, assessment design, and responsible faculty use of AI in teaching and assignments.

For help with assignment design, citation instruction, or source evaluation, contact the VTI Library.