In Teaching Tips, McKeachie (1999) suggests several ways that teachers can promote academic honesty with their students:

• Reduce the pressure, by providing several opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning, rather than giving only one or two exams.  Keep students informed of their progress throughout the semester.

• Make reasonable demands and write reasonable and interesting tests.  If students are frustrated and become desperate with an assignment that is too long or a test that focuses on trivial facts, they may be more tempted to cheat.

• Develop group norms that support honesty.  Even discussing academic honesty in class helps students recognize its value.

• Preserve each student’s sense that he or she is an individual with a personal relationship with the instructor and other students.  Dishonesty is less likely to occur if students feel that teachers and other students know them, as opposed to if they feel alienated and anonymous.

• When you’re giving a test, if a student has wandering eyes, ask the student to move to a different seat where s/he will be less crowded.  McKeachie writes, “If he says he’s not crowded, I simply whisper that I’d prefer that he move.  So far no one’s refused."

In order to defend against plagiarism, Walvoord and Anderson (1998) recommend intervening early.  “If you ask to see a proposal, outline, or draft of a student’s paper, it is much harder for that student to purchase or copy someone else’s work at the last minute.”  This method is also recommended so that students receive early direction, as opposed to finding out that they have spent many hours on a flawed work. This also forces the student not to procrastinate until the last moment.  Finally, taking time to check a draft helps you reach students during a teachable moment – when they can still do something to improve their work – rather than doing an autopsy on a final paper.  It will also save you at the end of the semester from making extensive comments on a final draft, because they have already received a good amount of feedback regarding changes on previous drafts.

For more information, see Academic Integrity and Avoiding Plagiarism guidelines on the Writing Center website and the Ombud’s website. For suggestions for how to present your academic honesty policy to your class, see Building a Syllabus.

Resources:
McKeachie, W.J.  (1999).  Teaching tips.  10th Ed.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Walvoord, B. & Anderson, V.J.  (1998).  Effective Grading.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.