The six fundamental values
◈ 7 cardsHonesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, courage — each as a behaviour, and how to match an act to the value it expresses or breaks.
Six words, and the behaviour behind each
The International Center for Academic Integrity defines academic integrity as a commitment to six fundamental values, and lists them in this order: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, courage. The University of Waterloo's Office of Academic Integrity presents the same six on its page for students, crediting ICAI — its page lists respect before fairness, so learn the set and use ICAI's order when asked to recite. (Both pages read September 2026.)
The MCQ does not ask you to define the values; it asks you to match a behaviour to one. So learn each as a behaviour:
| Value | The behaviour | The failure it names |
|---|---|---|
| Honesty | report your own work and results truthfully | a fabricated figure, a claimed reading not done |
| Trust | others can rely on your work without checking it | a group member's section that has to be redone |
| Fairness | the same rules for everyone | an advantage others did not have |
| Respect | engage seriously with others' ideas and work | dismissing feedback; talking over a group member |
| Responsibility | own your actions and their consequences | "the group did it"; "I did not know the rule" |
| Courage | act on the other five even when it costs you | staying silent when speaking up is expensive |
Courage is the value learners drop when reciting, because it reads as a virtue rather than a rule. It is there because the other five are cheap when nothing is at stake; courage is what makes them hold when something is. ICAI's landing page does not narrate its editions, so this course does not date when courage joined the list — only that it is on it.
Worked example — one act, two values
Your group of four submits a draft of the case response to the shared folder. One member, Theo, downloads it and submits it under his own name for the individual reflection component, with a paragraph changed. You find out the day before the deadline. Reporting this to the TA is expensive: Theo is a friend, the group still has three weeks together, and the accusation will be unpleasant.
Which values does reporting express? Courage, obviously — acting on the values at a cost. And responsibility: the draft is the group's work and its integrity is yours to own; letting it pass is a choice you would be making. Which value did Theo break? Honesty first (presenting the group's work as his own) and fairness (an advantage the others did not take). Note that respect and trust are affected too — but the MCQ asks which value an act chiefly expresses, and the answer is the value the act is about, not every value it touches.
Matching a behaviour to a value
Run four more:
- Helping a friend by sending your answers before the deadline. Chiefly a failure of fairness (an advantage others do not have) and responsibility (you own the consequence for both of you). It is not "kindness" — kindness is not on the list, and a kind act can still be a fairness failure.
- Telling the TA that your group's data collection had a flaw that makes the result unreliable, even though nobody would have known. Honesty, at a cost — so courage too.
- Reading a classmate's peer-review comments carefully and changing your draft in response rather than defending it. Respect.
- Doing your assigned section of the memo to the rubric so the others can build on it without re-checking. Trust — others can rely on your work.
What is never on the list
Distractors on this question are values that sound academic: loyalty, obedience, diligence, integrity itself (integrity is the commitment to the six, not one of them), kindness. If an option is not one of the six words, it is wrong however good it sounds.