Aligning Theoretical and Practical Considerations for Academic Integrity Education: A Canadian Perspective

Academic integrity has become one of academia’s main discussion points and concerns. Many of us were on the verge of promoting discussions advocating culture shifts in academic integrity on our campuses when the Pandemic hit. With the COVID-19 pandemic, discussions of academic integrity and departures from it increased unprecedently. Building academic integrity into the curriculum can increase students’ opportunities to be familiarized with it and learn how to maintain it. This chapter discusses the importance of embedding academic integrity into the curriculum. To further the discussion, after reviewing some theoretical and practical factors, the importance of including academic integrity across the curriculum is discussed. We can use the Backward Design model as an effective tool to integrate academic integrity into the curriculum and create an alignment. A practical guide for doing that is provided that proposes five steps in integrating academic integrity into the curriculum: (1) adding academic integrity values to the course outcome, (2) modifying lesson outcomes to incorporate newly adapted course outcomes, (3) designing instructional activities based on the new lesson and course outcomes, (4) adapting the evaluation techniques to incorporate new instructional activities and course outcomes, and (5) practicing an iterative evaluation to ensure an alignment exists between different elements of our curriculum including course and lesson outcomes, instructional activities, and evaluation practices.