Episode 41: Thomas J. Tobin

“I started out as an academic integrity prescriptivist. I was the hard-nosed.”

“There’s really only three main ways that we can ask students to demonstrate academic integrity: Trust, Verification, Observation.”

In this 41st episode of The Opposite of Cheating Podcast, David talks with Thomas J. Tobin, an educational developer and consultant with decades of experience, to challenge the punitive paradigms that dominate academic integrity conversations.

Sharing his personal transformation from “academic integrity prescriptivist” to UDL champion, Tom walks listeners through a powerful framework for promoting honesty in learning environments: Trust, Verification, and Observation. He emphasizes how lowering barriers—around time, grades, due dates, and communication—can dramatically reduce student pressure and cheating behavior. Rather than defaulting to surveillance and restriction, Tom calls on instructors to make design choices that respect learner variability and build integrity by default.

Listeners will learn how Universal Design for Learning intersects with academic integrity, and how reframing our goals around student agency and flexibility not only preserves rigor, but reduces workload for faculty and increases authentic learning for students.

You can follow Tom's work at https://thomasjtobin.com/ and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/drtomtobin/, and find his writings about UDL at https://www.ahead.ie/udlforfet-guidance and http://wvupressonline.com/node/757

(Disclaimer: episode quotes and summary were created using Youtube's Transcript and ChatGPT and edited by a human. Any errors are the responsibility of the human).e the responsibility of the human).