New academic integrity online reporting form announced

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Effective for the fall 2023 semester, all faculty University-wide must report student academic integrity violations at Penn State through an online form. The streamlined process centralizes how violations are reported and addressed, which promotes consistency and allows claims to be processed in a more timely manner. This initiative began during the pandemic and has been well received by the Penn State community. With support from the College of the Liberal Arts, the online form and process were developed by Andrew Peck, senior director of academic integrity and teaching professor of psychology in the College of the Liberal Arts. 

“Centralizing the reporting process and moving it online is a big step forward in helping to make the process more efficient and effective for our faculty and students,” said Jeff Adams, interim vice provost and dean for Undergraduate Education. “This change is one of a number of new coordinated efforts to provide more academic integrity resources to faculty and students.” 

In addition to his other duties, Peck has been named interim director and assistant dean for academic integrity in Undergraduate Education. In this new role, Peck will continue previous work with faculty and academic administrators to manage the academic integrity process. With the support of Undergraduate Education, he also will take on other responsibilities for managing academic integrity issues. Peck will continue to facilitate collaborations University-wide to develop new resources to help faculty, staff and students navigate academic integrity topics, too. 

“This new role is a great opportunity to highlight the educational aspects of academic integrity and its role in the educational journey, centralize resources, and streamline processes for handling academic integrity issues,” Peck said. “New and emerging technologies like ChatGPT and the growing role of artificial intelligence in our lives is changing the way we teach and learn, and it’s important to have a proactive approach to how we educate faculty and students about academic integrity. I’m looking forward to collaborating with faculty, staff and students on new resources and solutions.” 

Peck currently co-chairs with Sarah Whitney, director of academic affairs and associate teaching professor of English and women’s studies at Penn State Behrend, an academic integrity leadership community, which includes faculty and staff from Penn State colleges and campuses University-wide. Peck drew on conversations with this community to create new training videos for faculty, advisers, staff and students to help explain what academic integrity is at Penn State and how to handle questions and issues. The new videos provide an overview, academic integrity definitions, and outcomes and information about the life cycle of an academic integrity claim. The videos are available on Kaltura and online from Undergraduate Education. Faculty are encouraged to integrate the videos into their course curricula. More videos defining issues and outlining the reporting process for faculty also are being developed and will be shared later in the fall semester. 

In addition, Peck is leading efforts to revamp other online resources and to develop a new website to centralize academic integrity resources.