Academic Integrity

Fair treatment is essential to an ethical community. Important components of fairness include reasonableness, transparency, impartiality, and just treatment. You are fair to others and to the community when you act with honesty and do your own work. You are fair to authors and writers when you acknowledge borrowed ideas, words and work. You are fair to the academic community when you respect and uphold academic standards and practices.  

Ways to demonstrate fairness:  
 

• Apply rules and policies consistently. 
• Engage with others equitably. 
• Keep an open-mind. 
• Be objective. 
• Take responsibility for your own actions.

Honesty means being truthful and sincere, as well as acting in ways that are fair and free from deceit. Honesty begins with individuals and extends to the larger community. To seek knowledge and grow from that knowledge, you must be honest with yourself and others. Cultivating and practicing honesty lays a foundation for lifelong integrity.  

Ways to demonstrate honesty: 
 

• Be truthful. 
• Give credit to the owner of the work (i.e., musician, author, artist, speaker etc.). 
• Keep promises. 
• Provide factual evidence. 
• Aspire to objectivity, consider all sides and one's own potential preconceptions. 

Trust is a belief in the reliability, truth, ability or strength of someone or something. Trust is a necessary foundation of academic work. Trust enables you to collaborate, share information and circulate new ideas without fear that your work will be undermined or misused, or your career or reputation diminished. 

Ways to demonstrate trust: 
 

• Clearly state expectations and follow through. 
• Promote transparency in values, processes and outcomes. 
• Trust others. 
• Give credit. 
• Encourage mutual understanding.
• Act with genuineness. 

Respect is a feeling of admiration for someone or something based on abilities, qualities or achievements. Mutual respect means valuing others as you would like them to value you. In academic communities, respect means showing that you care about the opinions, reputation and well-being of the academic community.  

Ways to demonstrate respect: 
 

• Practice active listening.  
• Receive feedback willingly. 
• Accept that others’ thoughts and ideas have validity. 
• Show empathy. 
• Seek open communication.  
• Affirm others and accept differences. 
• Recognize the consequences of our words and actions on others. 

Being responsible means standing up against wrongdoing, resisting negative peer pressure and serving as a positive example. Responsible individuals hold themselves accountable for their own actions and work to discourage misconduct by others. For members of the academic community, this means safeguarding integrity, scholarship, teaching and research.  

Ways to demonstrate responsibility:  
 

• Hold yourself accountable for your actions.   
• Engage with others in difficult conversations, even when silence might be easier. 
• Know and follow institutional rules and conduct codes. 
• Create, understand, and respect personal boundaries.  
• Follow through with tasks and expectations. 
• Model good behaviour. 

Courage is an element of character that allows you to commit to the quality of your education by holding yourself and your fellow students to the highest standards of academic integrity—even when doing so involves risk or prompts negative consequences from peers. Being courageous means acting in accordance with your convictions. 

Ways to demonstrate courage: 
 

• Be brave even when others might not. 
• Take a stand to address a wrongdoing and support others doing the same. 
• Endure discomfort for something you believe in. 
• Be undaunted in defending integrity. 
• Be willing to take risk and risk failure.