Fundamental Values of Academic Integrity
(International Center for Academic Integrity, 2021)
Honesty
Honesty forms the indispensable foundation of integrity and is prerequiite for full realization of trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility.
Trust
Trust enables students and researchers to collaborate, share infomration, and circulate new ideas freely without fear.
Students promote trust by preparing work that is:
- honest,
- thoughtful, and
- genuine.
Faculty promote trust by setting clear guidelines for:
- assignments
- evaluating student work in an equitable, timely, and forthright manner.
Fairness
All members of the academic community, including faculty, students, administration, and staff have a right to expect fair treatment and a duty to treat others fairly.
Students engage in fairness by:
- doing their own original work,
- acknowledging borrowed work appropriately,
- respecting and upholding academic integrity policies, and
- maintaining the good reputation of the institution.
Faculty members are fair to students, each other, and instututions when they lead by example:
- communicating expectations clearly,
- responding to dishonesty consistently, and
- upholding academic integrity principles unfailingly.
Respect
The most dynamic and productive learning environments foster acrtive engagement, including rigorous teting, spirited debate, and lively disagreements over ideas tempered by civility and courtesy to those who voice them.
Students show respect when they value and take advantage of oppotunirites to gain new knowledge by:
- taking an an active role in their own education,
- contributing to discussions,
- actively listening to other points of view, and
- performing to the best of their ability.
Faculty show respect by taking students' ideas seriously by:
- recognizing them as individuals,
- helping them develop their ideas,
- providing full and honest feedback on their work, and
- valuing their perspectives and their goals.
Responsibility
Shared responsibility distributes and magnifies the power to effect change. Responsible communities can overcome apathy and inspire others to uphold the academic integrity standards of the group.
Students who are responsible:
- seek to obtain and understand information about classroom and institutional policy,
- follow these policies, and
- ask questions when they do not understand or disagree with them.
Faculty who are responsible:
- create and enforce classroom and institutiuonal policy,
- clearly communicate expectations around these policies,
- keep their word, and
- adhere to their institution's policies.
Courage
Courage is the capacity to act in accordance with one's values despite fear.
Students who exhibit courage hold themselves and their fellow learners to the highest standards of academic integrity even when doing so involves risk of negatgive consequences, such as a bad grade, or reprisal from their peers or others.
Among faculty members, courage manifests itself as the willingness to hold themselves, students, and other faculty accountable for maintaining a culture of integrity as defined by the five additional values.
(ICAI, 2021, p.10)