Oakton Community College's

Academic Integrity and Dishonesty Procedures

Please review the College's policy on academic integrity, found starting on Page 22 of the Student Handbook.  It provides clear directives on the procedures for dealing with students suspected of violating the Code of Academic Conduct (below, “the Code”). 

Many students are unfamiliar with all the aspects of the concept of academic integrity, and/or unsure of how it applies to the many different situations they may encounter during their college career.  It’s a good idea to briefly discuss at the beginning of every class how the College defines academic integrity, and the consequences of violations of the Code, particularly involving situations likely to come up in your particular class.

If you find evidence that a student has violated the Code, the following summarizes the procedures to be followed, which are described in full in the Student Handbook.

A.  Consult

1. Especially if you are new to Oakton, it’s a very good idea to discuss the situation with your department/program chair, division dean, or the Dean of Students, reviewing the circum­stances and the appropriate proce­dures, and agreeing on your plan of action.

B.  Meet with the Student 

1. Call the student in for a meeting.  (Do this by mail, email, or phone if he's not attending class, or if the semester has ended.)  He's entitled to know the purpose of the meeting in advance, so tell him that you suspect him of academic dishonesty and that you want to discuss the matter with him, and suggest that he read the Code of Academic Conduct in the Oakton Catalog or Student Handbook. 
2. During the meeting tell him of your specific concerns and try to determine how justified they are:  you can give him an oral quiz over the material, check his familiarity with the vocabulary or concepts, ask him detailed ques­tions about his sources.  If it's a paper that’s in question, for example, perhaps you can give him some passages from his paper with key words or phrases delet­ed, asking him to fill in the blanks.  If it's an exam, you can ask him to redo a few of the questions, to see if he can repeat his in-class performance.  You can ask him to repli­cate a questionable computer program in your presence.  By the end of the meeting, you can certainly tell the student your (tentative) “conclusions” about whether there has been a violation of the Code—but even then, as during the earlier part of the meeting, please try to maintain a tone of inquiry, rather than accusation.  You may discover that the student has a reasonable explanation for the situation, and that there isn’t sufficient reason to conclude that there has been a Code violation.
3. But if, in your professional judgment, there is sufficient reason to believe that the student has violated the Code of Student Conduct, then proceed to the next steps below.

C.  Informal Resolution of Complaint

The following three options are ways to deal with violations of academic integrity that do NOT involve a “formal” hearing.  They involve increasing levels of penalty to the student, but are all considered
“informal”.  The vast majority of violations are handled in one of these three informal ways. 

1.  Learning Opportunity

1. If, in your judgment, the student has submitted work that is not entirely her own, but did  not understand that the way in which she did so was a violation of the Code, you may make the incident a Learning Opportunity.  You might decide, for example, that she misunderstood the assignment, or was genuinely ignorant of footnoting conventions, or had some other type of “mitigating” circumstances.  In taking this option you are determin­ing that the student can gain more from redoing the work and demon­strating her mastery of the material than from undergoing punitive action appropri­ate for cheating or plagiarism.  You void the assignment in question, and require the student to redo the work in an acceptable way, perhaps with a redesigned exam or assignment.  Should you choose to make this a Learning Opportunity, no record of the incident will be made, and no Deans or other administrators will be informed.  More importantly, you cannot academically penalize the student at all for the violation—you must grade the redone assignment by the same standards as the original. 

2.  Faculty Resolution of Complaint

If you decide not to make it merely a Learning Opportunity, and wish to penalize the student with a penalty no more severe than failure on the assignment, and the student admits the violation and accepts the penalty, you may resolve the matter between you and the student.  This must also be the student’s first Code violation.  (If the student does not tell the truth about this being the first violation, this fact will soon be discovered, and the student will then be subject to stronger sanctions.) 
 
If you choose the Faculty Resolution of Complaint option, you and the student will agree on the penalty, then complete the Informal Resolution Form (forms are available both in the Division Office and on OCCshare in the Academic Integrity folder), which you and the student will sign, and then give to your Division Dean.  The Dean will have it filed in the Office of Student Affairs, where it will be kept for 3 years.  (This is how it is checked--and would in the future be checked--that the student does not have prior violations.)  The form is kept in a “confidential” file, and will not normally become public knowledge, even to most transfer institutions—and it is purged after 3 years, if there are no further violations.

3.  Administrative Resolution of Complaint

If the student accepts responsibility, and you believe that the sanction should be greater than failure on the test or assignment, but no greater than failure in the course, the Division Dean will arrange for, and preside over, an informal hearing.  At this hearing, both the instructor and student will be present, and will agree on the penalty.  Again, this must be the student’s first offense, and an Informal Resolution Form will need to be signed and filed in the Office of Student Affairs. 

D.  Formal Resolution 

If the student denies responsibility for an academic integrity violation; or acknowledges that this is not the first offense; or if you feel that the penalty should be greater than failure in the course, the student cannot be penalized until you file a written complaint with the Vice President of Student Affairs (form available on OCCSHARE), and a formal hearing is completed, at which you will submit your evidence and documentation regarding the violation.  This formal resolution process is rare, happening only a handful of times each year. 

First, the Dean of Students will meet with the student to explain the significance of the charge and to describe the procedures for dealing with it.  Meanwhile, the Dean of Students will also freeze the student's status until the matter is settled:  the student will not be able to withdraw from your class or register for next semester and, if the procedure lasts beyond the end of the semester, will receive an Incomplete for the class.

Then, the Dean of Students will convene a three-member hearing panel.  The panel will review the evidence you submit, as well as any offered by the student, and arrive at a deci­sion on the student's culpa­bili­ty.  If they decide that an act of academic dishonesty has indeed occurred, they will select an appropriate sanction, as listed in the Code of Student Conduct.  Students can appeal decisions in writing to the Vice President for Academic Affairs.

Please feel free to contact one of us if you have any questions.  We can be reached at X 1745 and X1739 and our office is 2270 DP!