Promoti NG Academ Ic Honesty

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Attached herewith is DepEd Memorandum
DM-OUCI-2021-395 dated September 20,
2021, from the Office of the Undersecretary
for Curriculum and Instruction on
Promoting Academic Honesty.
PROMOTING ACADEMIC
HONESTY
In its goal of producing holistically developed
learners, the Department of Education reiterates
its stand on maintaining academic honesty while
upholding every learner’s integrity. In view of the
most recent controversy on cheating as publicized
via Facebook, it must be emphasized that DepEd
does not and will not tolerate any form of
academic dishonesty.
The following points below must be always
underscored in all possible means:
1. Academic honesty is a foundational
element of learning and a fundamental
principle of all academic institutions.
Violations of the principle deprive
learners of the opportunity to gain a
confident command of the material they
are credited with knowing
(www.wpi.edu), degrade the learning
process, and demean the learning quality
that the Department is committed to
promote.
2. Academic dishonesty, on the other
hand, is defined as any conduct that
obstructs the evaluation of a learner’s
progress by misrepresenting the work
being assessed and evaluated, as well
as the learner’s actual knowledge
(www.wpi.edu).
3. Academic dishonesty can take many
forms, which can be broadly classified as
follows (Whitley & Keith-Spigel, 2002):
•Cheating. Cheating is defined as an
unauthorized use of information,
materials, devices, sources, or practices in
completing academic activities. For
example, copying another learner’s
answers during a test that should be done
separately is considered cheating.
Similarly, a learner who allows another
learner to copy his or her work is deemed
to be aiding or contributing to cheating.
•Plagiarism. Plagiarism is a form of cheating
in which someone takes another person’s
ideas, words, design, art, music, or other
works and passes them off as their own
without acknowledging the source or, if
necessary, seeking permission from the author.
•Fabrication or falsification. Fabrication or
falsification involves the unauthorized creation
or change of information in an academic work
or activity. For example, artificially creating
data when it should be collected from an actual
experiment or inventing a source of
information that does not exist is considered
fabrication or falsification.
Sabotage. Sabotage is the act of
interfering with or damaging another
person’s work to prevent that person from
successfully completing an academic task.
Destroying someone else’s artwork,
experiment, or design, for example, is
considered sabotage. Failure to contribute
as required to a team project can also be
considered academic sabotage.
•Contract cheating is another form of
academic dishonesty, which may happen
in any of the following situations
(Gorenko, 2020):
• unpaid assistance from friends or
family members to complete the work
in place of the learners
• a paper that has been taken from a
free essay website and is being used
as the learner’s own work
• an academic assignment done for a
fee by a third-party service
4. As self-directed learning materials,
the self-learning modules (SLMs) are
given to learners to allow them to
manage their learning through the
different formative assessments.
Although these are not graded and are
used to monitor learning progress and
prepare learners for summative
assessments, cheating on the answers to
the SLMs has become prevalent online.
5. While the SLMs have key to
correction, as an inherent feature of self-
instructional materials, it is not intended
to be used to cheat and bypass authentic
learning. Regardless of the design of the
SLMs and the extent of freedom in the
online space, cheating cannot be
justified under any circumstance.
6. To eradicate this form of cheating, the
Regional Offices are highly encouraged to
take the following immediate actions to
protect academic integrity and ensure the
veracity of learners’ assessment results.
a. Conduct orientation with parents to
raise awareness on the existence of FB
pages that promote cheating, encourage
their support against academic
dishonesty, and explain the repercussions
of cheating to the learning and values
of their children.
b. Ensure proactive transparency of the
assessment and grading system to parents and
learners in order to promote understanding of
the purpose of formative assessments in the
SLMs.
c. Monitor the learner’s online activity and
warn them against membership in any online
cheating platform
d. Encourage teachers to write up a contract
about academic dishonesty and explain the
contents to the learners and parents and have
them both sign the contract. Then, if a
learners is caught cheating, the teacher can
pull out the contract and act accordingly.
e. Develop Self-learning Activities (SLAs)
or the Learning Activity Sheets (LAS) that
require learners to analyze information,
craft creative presentations, or explain their
thinking. These shall be validated by the
SDO or School Learning Resource Team.
f. Incorporate other assessment schemes,
such as:
•doing an online assessment during class,
•creating multiple versions of tests,
•randomizing test items for students to
work on,
•presenting questions just once to avoid
retracing of previous answers, and
•using peer feedback or allowing learners
to assess each other’s work.
g. Create TV and Radio programs that
promote honesty and integrity to be aired
on specific schedule. There should be
motivational programs for learners as well
as for parents/guardians. These programs
may be aired using their own mother-
tongue.
h. Encourage schools to build a support
group for parents to ensure that they are
instilling the values of honesty and
integrity in their children, which will be
facilitated by the PTA.
i. Intensify academic consultations through
any available modes of communications,
such as online, call, text, and others. These
are proactive, not punitive, strategies.
j. Include academic integrity in the
INSET/Capacity Building Programs that
may serve as avenues for teachers to
identify teaching actions and attitude that
push the students to cheat.
k. Direct all schools to prioritize the
development of programs and school rules
and regulation that promote academic
integrity to reduce/eradicate the incidence
of cheating.
l. Offer recommendations on the
improvement and transparency of the
policy guidelines on assessment and
grading system to ease the pressure on
competition.
7. The Department recognizes the limitations of
managing assessments in the current learning
set-up; however, teachers, parents, and school
heads are highly encouraged to seek out
opportunities to teach academic integrity among
learners and discourage them from feeding on
laziness and instant gratification as this will
generate devastating effects on their values.
Nonetheless, when dealing with academic
dishonesty, teachers, parents, and school heads
should use caution, exercise good judgment, and
treat learners with respect and fairness.
8. Widest dissemination of this OUCI
Memorandum is desired.
References:
Gorenko, Y. (March 11, 2020). Contract cheating: Reasons behind it and
ways to stop it. Retrieved from https://elearningindustry.com/contract-
cheating-reasons-and-ways-to-stop.
Northern Illinois University. (2021). Academic Integrity Tutorials. Retrieved
from https://www.niu.edu/academic-integritv/facultv/types/index.shtml.
What is academic dishonesty? Retrieved from
https://www.wpi.edu/about/policies/academic-integritv/dishonesty
Whitley, Jr., B. & Keith-Spiegel, P. (2002). Academic dishonesty: An
educator’s guide. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Eribaum Associates.

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