Academic Integrity

To foster a culture of integrity that supports both faculty and students, changes were made to the Academic Offences tab in the Employee Portal at the beginning of Spring Term 2024.  These updates provided consistent wording aligned with other Academic Offences policies and procedures, encourage consistency when navigating and filing academic incidents, and allow for equitable penalty application when an Academic Integrity Violation (AIV) has occurred.

These updates included:

1. One Warning Per Student Record: Students can receive only one warning on their academic incident record. If a student has received a warning, or received an offence for their first AIV, faculty will only be able to select an offence for any subsequent AIV..

• This update encourages a progressive and incremental approach that is consistently and fairly applied to each incident.

2. Disclaimer Before Filing: This disclaimer encourages procedural fairness when navigating the academic integrity procedure.

• Faculty are required to acknowledge that they have followed the proper academic integrity procedure.

• The update is to dissuade procedural irregularity and mitigate invalid appeals.

3. Adjustments to the ‘Add Supporting Documents’ Section: Faculty can “hide” certain document uploads so that students cannot view them in their Student Portal.

• This update eliminates the possibility of students downloading and sharing confidential information (e.g., screenshots of testing materials, other student identifiers, etc.).

4. New Email Template for Student Document: The Academic Integrity Office developed a comprehensive document with email templates to students, which faculty can utilize when communicating with students during the investigation process.

• This update provides faculty with greater efficiency in the communication process.

5. Name Change of Tab: The Employee Portal tab was renamed “Integrity Violations.”

• This update ensures consistent wording with other Academic Integrity documents.

For more information, please contact Cory Scurr, Manager of Academic Integrity.

In Winter 2025, Turnitin released a new feature which allows instructors to more easily compare student submissions to other Conestoga student papers that Turnitin has identified as being similar. This new feature, called Submission Release, means that instructors will not have to send a 'Paper View Request' when they want to see the source text if the source paper is submitted to their own institution’s account.

Instead, after selecting the match within the document viewer, a new window will open. Instructors will be provided with a link to download the assignment in question. This file will be provided as both a PDF and in the same format that the file was originally submitted. This only includes the actual body of text of the source submission, not its details such as paper ID, student who submitted, etc.

This feature allows access only to other papers within our institutional account, ie papers submitted to Conestoga College courses.

Conestoga Library & Learning Services are thrilled to announce the completion of our “Generative AI for Students” LibGuide. This resource empowers students with knowledge about generative artificial intelligence (AI) and its applications. Generative AI Guidance for Conestoga Students