Support and Resources

We encourage all faculty to file every Academic Integrity Violation (AIV) they discover. This limits inconsistencies with how our students are treated, draws their attention to the educational materials, and gives them the chance to course-correct. For more information on filing, see the Step-by-Step guide.

Faculty must first open up lines of communication. Once you notice a potential Academic Integrity Violation (AIV), you have three business days to email the student and let them know that you’re looking into the potential issue. For more detailed information on filing, see the Step-by-Step guide.

Warnings and Offences are outcomes of an Academic Integrity Violation (AIV). The key difference is students do not receive an academic penalty with a warning. Only offences receive an academic penalty. Also, students may only receive a maximum of 1 warning. For more information, see Types of Incident.

If you see the student in class within those three days, encourage them to check their email and respond. If the three days expire, then you may file the incident within three business days, following the usual procedure from our Step-by-Step guide.

An official College email must be used (eConestoga, and the Conestoga College Outlook email). If a student uses or responds from a personal account, indicate they must reply using an official email account.

If an Academic Integrity Violation (AIV) occurred in a testing situation, and the student was told of the faculty's intent to file at the point where the incident was observed, the full 3-3-3 process is still required. You should indicate to the student that they're receiving an AIV (and depending on the nature of the incident you may ask them to leave), but you must follow up with the student and summarize the situation. The process creates a paper trail, allows the student a fair opportunity to explain any possible misunderstanding, and reduces the chance of an appeal.

Not necessarily. While the college follows a developmental and incremental approach to penalties, not all situations warrant an increased penalty. Penalties in general should increase over time, but for specific incidents penalties can stay the same or occasionally step backwards at faculty discretion. For more information, see Understanding Penalties.

Yes. Aiding and Abetting, Contract Cheating, Misrepresentation and Fraud, and Plagiarism are Academic Integrity Violations (AIVs) that cannot receive a Warning and must receive an Offence due to their egregiousness. For more information, see Understanding Penalties.

Once you file an Academic Integrity Violation (AIV), students receive an email explaining they received a Warning or Offence (depending on which you selected). It directs them to their Student Portal where they can view a detailed explanation of the incident. It is also explained to them that they are required to complete Academic Integrity Modules 1, 2, and possibly 3 and 4 (depending on whether a faculty selects the latter two). The Modules are interactive educational resources designed to help students understand academic integrity.

If the student has multiple AIVs, our Student Outreach Team will invite the student to a meeting with our consultants. The consultant can help the student understand why they received the incident, understand the relevant policies and procedures, make a plan to avoid repeating the same mistake in the future, and connect them with resources elsewhere in the college.

Yes. A student has the right to appeal any Academic Integrity Violation (AIV). Full-time students must use the appeals form found in their Student Portal; the completed form will be sent to their Chair for review. Part-time students must email their Chair directly. For more information, see our section on appeals.

Not necessarily. Keep in mind that Turnitin compares student work to all other work in its database, including projects in the same course or section, websites, published works, and submissions from other institutions, etc.

If, for instance, your class is working on a project and all submissions should appear similar, Turnitin will flag those responses. Similarly, a student could theoretically have a Similarity Report “in the red” but have everything properly cited and referenced. While this may be poor writing practice, or they have not met the assessment outcomes, they have not plagiarized since they’ve given proper credit to the source. The student may still receive a poor grade, but they should not receive an Academic Integrity Violation (AIV).

Students who re-submit old work (with advance permission from you) will have high scores but have not committed misconduct. Students may also end up with high scores if they submit their work in an unauthorized "test" dropbox from another course. To learn more, visit the Turnitin website or contact the Academic Integrity Office.

The Turnitin AI writing and AI paraphrasing detection scores, while useful, are not foolproof. These score have both false positives and false negatives. The false positive rate is at least 1 in 100, which may not seem like much, but adds up to many hundreds of false positives per semester in a school like Conestoga. Additionally, because of the way the tools work, they are more likely to give a false positive when English is not a student’s first language. Because of this, the Turnitin AI detection scores are a good red flag to draw your attention to an issue, but the Academic Integrity office recommends that 2-3 pieces of additional evidence are required to achieve the balance of probabilities. For more information, view our guide to evidence for generative AI.

Your Chair will automatically be informed if you select a penalty from Category 3 or 4. If you select a penalty from Category 1 or 2 which will result in the student failing the course, please inform your Chair.

Yes. You may select discontinuance, but the decision will not be made unilaterally. Selecting a Category 4 penalty acts as a line of communication to your Chair for review. In other words, selecting the Category 4 penalty is a recommendation you’re making to your Chair, who can then engage in a discussion with those concerned.

If you notice your student has accrued a number of Academic Integrity Violations (AIVs) or the few AIVs they've committed are egregious, we do encourage faculty to select category 4. As always, please feel free to connect with the Academic Integrity Office for guidance and support. 

Yes. Email the Academic Integrity Office with the student’s name and ID number and indicate whether it was a Warning or Offence. Please provide a brief explanation why it needs removing/changing. For more information, see Made a Mistake?

This is a new behaviour from Respondus software that Conestoga was informed about in late Summer 2024, which has the potential to be disruptive in testing situations.

What we know:

• If Respondus detects behaviour that it thinks indicates an attempt to circumvent use of the software, students will receive a warning within the software.  These warnings are in English, or in the other Responds-supported languages if enabled (French/German/Portuguese/Spanish).
• If another attempt is detected, the student will be banned from using the product. When banned, students are provided a reference number and instructions to contact their administrator. These instructions are not very specific and students may be confused about the required next steps.
• Respondus does not notify eConestoga, faculty, or the Academic Integrity Office when these events occur, nor do we receive reports on how often this happens or how many students are impacted.

OLC and Academic Integrity team are working on documenting a process for responding to these incidents, to reduce the impact on faculty. We are also working with Respondus to learn more about this behaviour and identify if any improvements or adjustments can be made.  For now, if a student reports to you that they have been banned:

1. Instruct the student to email eConestoga explaining what happened. Tell them to include their Respondus reference number if they saved it.
2. The eConestoga team will connect with Respondus to request the student be unblocked. That team will provide you with any details they receive from Respondus about what the software thinks happened, which you can consider when determine whether an Academic Integrity Violation occurred.
3. For allowing the student to finish or retake the task (if applicable), follow your standard course, program, or departmental procedure for missed quizzes or technical issues.

For any testing that must occur while the student remains blocked, options include:

• Require the student to take the quiz with a proctor in the testing centre OR
• Other solutions based off the course, program or department policies OR
• Apply to eConestoga for help gaining special access for that user to take 1 more attempt (ideally supervised on campus), without Respondus (** only if other solutions are not viable ** ) 

Students may mistakenly think that they can avoid Academic Integrity Violations by dropping the course before the investigation is concluded. In our latest policy update, a line was added which states “A student may not withdraw from any course where there is an on-going investigation of an AIV,” specifically to address this issue.  

If a student withdraws while an investigation is still ongoing, we suggest that faculty contact their Chair. The Chair can reach out to the Registrar and request that the student be re-added to the course. The Chair can then reach out to the student,  letting them know they are being re-added to the course pending the resolution of the investigation and advising them to participate fully in the investigation process. We would suggest giving the student an additional three business days to reply with their evidence etc following this notification.  

If delays in the investigation are caused by the student’s withdrawal, we do not consider this to be in violation of the 3-3-3 process. Best practice is to add a note to the filing evidence stating that the delay was caused by the student attempting to withdraw in violation of the policy. If the student chooses to appeal to the Dean or Registrar, this note will help them to understand that the delay was not in violation of the procedure. 

If the investigation ends with the decision to file an incident, and the student has not yet been re-registered in the course, the Chair can file on behalf of the faculty. When the student is properly re-registered, any relevant course-level penalties (such as a zero on the assessment) can then be applied. If the student still wishes to withdraw after the penalties have been applied, they may do so. 

If the investigation ends without a filing and the student still wishes to withdraw, they may do so. The Chair can advise the Registrar to halt the re-registration process if applicable. If the investigation caused a delay that impacted the student’s ability to withdraw before the add/drop date or academic penalty date, please connect the student to the Registrar’s office to address the issue. Students who are not found guilty of misconduct should not be penalized by the investigation process. 

Students are allowed to use any tool that their faculty give them permission to use (authorized aids) and not allowed to use any tool their faculty specifically prohibit (unauthorized aids). Conestoga College does, broadly, support the use of Grammarly Premium (EDU) as a useful writing aid for students. For more information about Grammarly, how students can access the approved version, and useful settings for students to be aware of, see our Student Guide - Grammarly Premium (EDU version).