Course Title: Addressing and Reporting Academic Dishonesty
Intended Audience: New and veteran college faculty experiencing incidents of academic dishonesty in their courses
Tools Used: Articulate Storyline 360, Camtasia, Coolors, MS PowerPoint, Miro
Goals/Objectives: The learning objectives of this course are to train new and veteran instructors on:
Overall, the goal is to have instructors follow a standardized procedure when an issue of academic dishonesty arises.
Needs Analysis
In higher education settings, many faculty feel underprepared to handle a situation of academic dishonesty. To investigate the cause of this, I did some research and found that most higher education institutions do not offer any training on how instructors effectively confront and report academic integrity issues. To further investigate this, I developed a survey in Google Forms and distributed it to subject matter experts (current college-level instructors) in my network. The survey revealed that 92% of instructors felt that they received little to no training on how to appropriately handle matters of academic dishonesty, 84% experienced extreme or moderate stress/anxiety when confronting students about academic dishonesty, and 76% did not feel confident in the correct way to report violations. I determined that training would be effective in influencing how instructors properly confront and report student academic integrity violations, which a majority (96%) of respondents agreed would decrease the amount of stress they experienced during these encounters.
I also spoke with past colleagues that work in the office dedicated to maintaining academic integrity to determine if they thought a course would be useful. The consensus was that a course dedicated to training instructors on this issue would cut down on stress and confusion for both teachers and students while also helping the University to avoid legal issues. If one instructor handles a violation one way and another instructor handles it differently, it opens those instructors and the school to possible legal action.
Based on my analysis, I decided that a scenario-based eLearning course will help to bridge the knowledge and skill gap for both veteran and new instructors dealing with issues of academic dishonesty.
Consequences if need not addressed:
• Potential for stress and frustration of instructors
• Potential for confusion, anger, and embarrassment amongst the students when not handled properly
• Possible legal implications if one instructor reports a violation and another instructor does not for the same infraction
Course Outline: I created a course outline in Miro.
Course Design: After an initial consultation with my SMEs that work in the office dedicated to maintaining academic integrity, I constructed a storyboard in Microsoft Word. The storyboard went through multiple iterations based on SME and peer feedback. A sample is included below:
Functional Prototype: Using Articulate Storyline, I developed a functional prototype. Additional graphics and text were created/edited in Canva and PowerPoint and integrated into the project. This prototype went through several iterations before moving forward with full development. The visual prototype is included below:
Full Course Development: The remainder of the course was developed using Articulate Storyline 360, with additional graphics and text (created/edited in Canva and PowerPoint) and audio narration (recorded and edited in Camtasia) integrated into the project. I also created custom backgrounds and elements within Storyline such as markers, animations, questions and activities, custom buttons, states, variables, conditional triggers, and more to create an interactive and engaging learning experience.
Challenges: One of my challenges was meeting regularly with my SMEs. I started developing the course toward the end of the semester and they were very busy so we decided to set up regular meetings so that we could both plan ahead. If there wasn’t anything to discuss, we canceled the meeting. I also gathered content from online sources to fill in gaps. I learned that communication is key when trying to coordinate multiple people with varying schedules. I made sure to give plenty of notice when scheduling a meeting or if we could cancel a meeting.
Another challenge I encountered was finding images that fit with the design of the course. Because this was a serious topic, I decided to use photographic characters instead of cartoons. I wanted to keep the feel of the course consistent so when I needed an image (students whispering, computers, etc.) I sometimes had a hard time finding exactly what I needed. I utilized PowerPoint to edit the images into what I was looking for but if I were to create this course again, I would plan ahead and use Photoshop instead. That would give me more control over editing so that I could get exactly what I envisioned. In the future, I will also keep that limitation in mind when designing a course.
Supplementary Materials: In order to further enhance learning, I created a job aid that will be helpful for faculty members during and after the training.
Implementation: If I were to implement this course at a university, I would deliver it via the learning management system in order to track engagement and results. This course would be available on-demand for academic faculty so that, when they encounter instances of academic dishonesty, the information is fresh and easily applied to the situation.
Evaluation:
If this course were to be implemented, I would evaluate the success based on several things:
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