Academic Integrity Tutorial: Learning Outcomes

The Rationalizations video suggests that we all have the ability to lie a little and/or cheat a little and that we make excuses to rationalize our behaviour, even believing those excuses ourselves¹.

As a student, it is important to recognize that, despite how capable we may be of rationalizing our unethical actions, rationalizing academic misconduct is never acceptable.

Academic misconduct, even minor errors, have negative consequences on learning and are detrimental to the scholarly community at large. The onus, therefore, is on every student to become fully aware of what it means to act with academic integrity, what constitutes academic misconduct and how to avoid it.

Upholding the highest standards of academic integrity contributes not only to the integrity of the individual but to their profession and the academic institution to which they belong as well.

After completing the learning activities associated with this module, you should be able to

• Define academic integrity and the values associated with it
• Recognize academic misconduct and the ways it is sometimes rationalized 
• Identify common misconduct pitfalls and the larger problem these offences create 
• Recognize the risks associated with even minor acts of academic misconduct