GENERAL PRINCIPLES

• All instructors should be familiar with the Student Conduct Code as it reflects the Washington Administrative Code, Chapter 478-120. You should also be familiar with the procedures followed by your college for reporting any charges of misconduct and determining jurisdiction.
   
• The Committee has prepared Academic Responsibility information for students, published in the Bachelors Degree Planbook. This report explains the nature of ethical conduct in scholastic pursuits and defines plagiarism and other forms of cheating. If you wish to use this guide as a vehicle for explaining academic conduct to one of your courses or any other set of students, a copy is available upon request from the Dean's Representative.
   
• On the first day of class, it is always worthwhile for an instructor to announce his or her overall standards for academic conduct, adding any specific rules which students are to follow in the completion of specific assignments or examinations. There is enough variability on the latter subject to recommend clarification by each instructor in each course. Expectations and implicit rules also vary across disciplines, so there can be no assurance that definitions of terms such as plagiarism will generalize from a basic composition course to an advanced course in another department. Some cases of "misconduct" have arisen from a simple failure to provide clear instructions. On the other hand, it is equally clear that a failure to understand clear instructions is no excuse for misconduct.
   
• Faculty who supervise teaching assistants should take measures to assure standards are maintained across all sections and grading procedures insofar as the detection and reporting of suspicious behavior is concerned.
   
• When specific measures (for examples, see below) are taken, they should be announced to the class so that they will act as deterrents to misconduct.

SPECIFIC PREVENTIVE MEASURES

EXAMINATIONS

1. Proctoring- This involves asking one or more teaching assistants to be present during exams to observe student behavior during a testing session. They should be aware of students looking at another student's exam or students referring to "crib" sheets or other aids.
2. Multiple forms of exams- These are especially useful when seating is close together or affords an easy opportunity for students to be tempted to look at another student's exam. Many faculty have found it of further value to copy these forms onto different colors of paper.
3. Ask students to sign an honor statement of the front page of every exam. This statement should say something to the effect that they have not given nor received any assistance in completing the text. If signatures are gathered from students at the beginning of the class, this also acts to prevent students from having another student take the test for them.
4. Frequent changing of exams- It is well known that some student groups keep extensive files of a particular faculty member's past exams.
5. If you allow students to resubmit exams for re-grading, it is wise to make marks on the tests before they are returned to the students so that detection of alterations is simpler. A more expensive and time consuming approach is to make copies of all papers.
6. If bluebooks are used, a time honored method is to collect all bluebooks at the start of class and redistribute them randomly among the students.
7. Assigned seating by quiz sections- This reduces the possibility of students sitting next to someone they know and to allow teaching assistants to identify anyone who is not in their quiz section.
8. Avoid posting answers outside of an examination room or providing answer sheets once students submit their examination papers. This can invite abuse. Some delay, while inconvenient, is recommended in the provision of such feedback to students.
9. Grade exams in ink to eliminate the possibility of students erasing marks or scores and submitting them as mistakes in your grading process. Ask students to sign their names in ink on each page of an exam.
10. Exams should not be left in hallways or other common areas when they are returned after grading. Not only is this a breach of the students' privacy, but theft of exams with high grades for the purpose of future copying, exam files or cannibalism for re-grading is not uncommon.
11. Be aware of unusual clothing worn on examination day. Ball caps should be removed or the bill of the cap reversed. Sunglasses removed.
12. Make clear what electronic instruments are allowed/banned from the testing environment, e.g., cell phones, smart phones, wireless handheld devices, calculators.

PAPERS

1. Many students have never written a research paper before, so it is useful to provide some simple rules of documentation when it is necessary to document proper referencing styles, etc., especially as they are specific to your discipline.
2. Some faculty will encourage collaboration for the purpose of enhancing the learning experience, but there is much variation on the extent of these limits. If any collaboration is allowed, the limits of such collaboration should be made very clear.
3. Ask students to turn in rough (un-typed) drafts. This has the salutary effect of providing you with a sense of their progress on a paper and an opportunity to give them some guidance as well as minimizing the possibility of their using paper writing services or other student's papers.
4. As with exams, papers should not be left in halls when they are returned after grading.