When to loop in your academic integrity office
The five-step process resolves most of this yourself. Knowing when it stops being yours to resolve is the part that’s easy to get wrong in either direction.
Most cases end at the conversation
If a student’s explanation is consistent with their draft history and earlier work, that’s a resolution, not a referral. Escalating every flagged score regardless of what the conversation turns up treats a routine check like it’s always heading somewhere formal, which it usually isn’t.
What actually crosses the line
An explanation that contradicts the evidence, a pattern across multiple assignments, or a student who declines to discuss it — these are the signals that move a case from “conversation” to “your institution’s formal process,” not the score by itself.
Know your institution’s threshold before you need it
Academic integrity offices differ in what they expect a referral to already contain: a completed rubric, a documented conversation, a comparison against baseline work. Knowing this in advance means you’re not assembling it under time pressure the first time you need it.
Document even when you don’t escalate
A short note on what you checked and what the student said, kept even for cases you resolve yourself, protects you and the student equally if the same question ever comes up again.