Assignments at Relay are designed to support students’ growth and development as teachers. Students’ work products, therefore, should be their own. All Relay students are expected to demonstrate and uphold the highest level of academic integrity throughout their Relay experience.

Relay regards acts of academic dishonesty (e.g., plagiarism, cheating on assignments, obtaining unfair advantage, and falsification of records or official documents) as serious offenses against the values of intellectual integrity. Relay will treat any deliberate use of others’ work (including the use of artificial intelligence) without citation or disclosure as plagiarism. Relay regards acts of academic dishonesty to include, but not be limited to:

• Plagiarism: For example:
  • Directly quoting/paraphrasing from a book, article, interview, video, artificial intelligence output, etc. without citing the author, title, and year of publication
  • Submitting work generated by artificial intelligence (AI) without citation/disclosure
  • Using/submitting another Relay student’s or Relay alum’s work (either by paraphrasing or quoting directly) without citation/disclosure 
  • Submitting the same assignment as another student unless faculty have permitted group work 
  • Submitting lesson and/or unit plans designed by someone else without listing the designers and/or collaborators
• Cheating on assignments: For example, collaborating on a content knowledge assignment that is to be taken individually, securing an answer key, etc.
• Obtaining unfair advantage: For example, gaining advance access to assignment questions
• Falsification of records, student data, or official documents

The majority of a submitted assignment should be students’ original written work. Students who use school- or district-provided materials, or materials from a published curriculum, must cite their sources in the text (i.e., APA citation, see Relay Library’s Citation Guide) to make clear which portions of the work came from sources other than the students themselves. Students should treat the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-generated material the same as material from other external sources (e.g., citing/disclosing their use) AND adhere to the guidelines for responsible usage of AI. 

Teaching is a highly collaborative profession. Therefore, verbal collaboration with colleagues is permitted, provided that all collaborators share in the completion of the assignment and that all collaborators demonstrate the knowledge and skills necessary to complete the work. When in doubt, collaborators should reach out to their professors. All collaboration should be only conversational in nature; students should submit unique, individual written work for each assignment unless group work has been explicitly allowed by the professor. Students must list collaborator(s) on the assignment template. 

Failure to follow Relay's academic integrity policy may negatively affect students’ assignment scores and may lead to additional academic sanctions (e.g., overall course-score penalty, resubmission of an assignment, program dismissal). 

Breaches of academic honesty on formative assignments (e.g., synthesis and reflection tasks, discussion boards, application tasks, reflection journals, teaching artifacts, and short teaching observations) may negatively impact student grades on those assignments. The resolution of these incidents is up to the discretion of faculty, but will not be noted on students’ formal academic records. Students may follow the Grade Appeal process if they disagree with the resolution. 

Summative assignments (e.g., written assignments, midterms, and finals, gateways, and term observations) significantly impact final grades; students are therefore entitled to a formal discussion regarding any academic integrity concerns on these assignments before a resolution is reached. The process for reviewing potential situations that breach the academic integrity policy for summative assignments is as follows:

• If a faculty member presumes a student has engaged in an act of academic dishonesty, faculty members will inform their instructional leader immediately, including all relevant documentation. The faculty member will then confer with the student, ensuring documentation of communication throughout the process.
• Faculty members—in consultation with the instructional leader—will administer a sanction aligned to the specific act of academic dishonesty. The sanction could range from a grade deduction to recommendation for dismissal from the program.
• Repeated violations of the academic integrity policy will result in dismissal from the program.
• Student appeals of academic integrity policy decisions may be made by emailing [email protected] within one week of receiving notification of the resolution. Cases will then be reviewed by the department chair, assistant dean, and/or dean, and they will confirm or update the sanction commensurate with the academic integrity action.
• In the case that the sanction is dismissal from the program, a student has the option to petition to appeal the program dismissal sanction by completing a petition to appeal their dismissal, which will be reviewed by the Academic Review Board, who will make a final determination.