Key messages to take away

There are three key messages I want you to take away from this course. The first, and this is going to be shocking. Students are human beings. Human beings will make bad decisions under stress and pressure. In particular, if you’re teaching younger human beings say under 25, they are more likely to make some bad decisions under stress and pressure like exams, right? There’s nothing more stressful probably to a teenager’s life or a young person’s life than an exam or particularly a high stakes exam.

So, remembering that will allow you to respond to misconduct in a different way, not as an assault or an affront to your human beingness, your sense of yourself as an instructor, but just a kid who made a bad decision under stress and pressure. And so you then can approach it as an educational or developmental moment.

The second key message I’d like you to take away from this course is that students actually want to learn. Again, I mentioned this earlier. When we were young two, three, four, five years old, we wanted to learn. I always talk about how the most important question or the most common question all two year olds ask is, “Why?” And then you give them an answer and they say, “Why?” And you give them another answer and they say, “Why?” That tells us that human beings innately want to learn. So remind students of that innate desire they have to learn. Sure, the system might have deviated them from that path because of our focus on grades and degrees as currency in this knowledge economy. But reminding them they want to learn can be extremely helpful.

And the third key message is that this is a partnership, right? You are in this with the students. You are not the sage on the stage, but you are a co-creator of this teaching and learning environment with the students. And if you approach academic integrity that way, you will have a lot more success than if you approach it from an autocrat do and don’t type of way. So those are the most important things to remember.

Three key messages. Students make bad decisions. People make bad decisions under stress and pressure and they need some help with that. Two, we love to learn. We need some help in being reminded of that. And three, this is a partnership, a co-creation of a good, solid teaching and learning environment that is focused on integrity.

So thank you very much for joining me. I hope you enjoyed this course. I encourage you to engage in the discussion forum with the other educators who watch this course, and share ideas in your own tips and techniques for teaching with and for integrity.