New UB students enrolled in course on academic integrity

All incoming UB students are being enrolled in an online course on academic integrity this fall that is designed to educate them about the university’s expectations as they begin their studies at UB.

The new course, developed by the Office of Academic Integrity, is an interactive, narrated module that includes lessons and short quizzes. Kelly Ahuna, director of the Office of Academic Integrity, hopes the course will familiarize students with UB’s academic integrity policy and provide clarity by presenting students with interactive scenarios.

The online course was piloted to 2,200 new students last fall, including incoming undergraduates in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, as well as incoming undergraduate and graduate students in the School of Public Health and Health Professions. A smaller pilot group of new students in the same schools was assigned the course in the spring. Ahuna says these schools were included in the pilot because of their variance in size and diversity of the student body. 

The success of the pilot course was reflected the feedback from participants: 71.5% of students said they had learned something about academic integrity that they had not previously known, and 77% said they felt more prepared to complete their studies at UB after taking the course.  

The course is similar to the “alcohol.edu” and sexual violence prevention modules that all new UB students take before their first semester. After searching for courses highlighting academic integrity to no avail, Ahuna and Loretta Frankovitch, assistant director for academic integrity, developed one from scratch.

“It took us about a year to create the 30-minute module, but given the feedback so far, we’re pleased with how it turned out,” Ahuna says.

The pilot course was assigned to students in the fourth week of the fall semester, and students were given a month to complete it. Overall, there were only 29 students who did not complete the course.

Ahuna notes that students who violate the academic integrity policy are sometimes unaware that they’re breaking the rules. She cites students who reuse their own work for multiple assignments as an example.

“It’s something a lot of students don’t know because they think, ‘This is my own property. I’m not taking it from somebody else. I did it, I put in the work, why can’t I use it twice?’ And while I understand how they reach that conclusion, they do get in trouble for that,” Ahuna says. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t know better; you'll be held accountable.”

Ahuna points out that UB draws students from different educational backgrounds and from various parts of the world. The new course will make sure all students are on the same page when they begin their studies at UB. “My hope is that students will be prevented from having cases filed against them and going through all the stress that it brings for them,” she says.

This fall, all new undergraduates will be automatically enrolled in the course in Brightspace on Sept. 6. Deadlines for completion will be determined by individual seminar instructors. For freshmen, completion will typically be tracked within their first-semester seminar classes, and students will get an Academic Integrity Badge upon completion. Enrollment of new graduate students varies based on their affiliation, with a few schools and departments not participating until next fall.

Ahuna hopes educating students on academic integrity will lower the number of cases that her office processes each semester, which would also reduce the stressors for students. The course was designed, she says, as a concrete example of the Office of Academic Integrity’s goal of maintaining the honesty of education for the university.

Academic integrity is a fundamental university value. The Office of Academic Integrity was founded in 2019 in an effort to centralize education and remediation of academic integrity cases.

“Cases of dishonesty were previously handled by individual departments and schools, and repeat offenders were not recognized as such due to the lack of communication between administrators handling cases,” Ahuna explains. “We also had reports of students who felt like their cases were not always handled fairly.”

The Office of Academic Integrity supports students going through dishonesty cases and educates them about the standards that UB expects them to hold — with the aim of reducing the number of offenders. These goals were always important for UB, Ahuna says, but the creation of the Office of Academic Integrity helped solidify the effort. 

Ahuna feels strongly about academic integrity and says dishonesty hurts UB’s reputation.

“I think if you get a job and you are terrible at your job because you cheated your way through school and you don’t know what you’re supposed to know, that employer thinks that UB is underpreparing graduates. The next time somebody from UB applies, they are much less likely to hire that person,” she says.

“To me, every graduate of UB is inextricably linked to all other graduates from UB. I feel like it’s the responsibility of this office to make sure people are aware of that and to hold them to the highest standard of completing their work honestly, so their grade report will reflect what they know.”