Strengthening Academic Integrity through your Teaching
Teaching practices strongly influence how students acquire and integrate Trinity’s Graduate Attributes into their professional, educational, and research practice. The Graduate Attributes are rooted in positive values of academic integrity and a shared understanding of ‘good ’academic practice underpinned by academic honesty, transparency, accountability and responsible/ethical behaviours. Academic dishonesty/ breaches of academic integrity have a real-world impact. Professional practice in many domains (e.g. academia, healthcare, public service, engineering) relies on academic integrity as a key component of fitness-to-practice.
University teaching plays a key role in helping students develop their understanding of academic integrity and good academic practice.
This section aims to support you to:
- identify and implement teaching strategies with the capacity to develop and strengthen students' understanding of academic integrity
- promote values of ‘good’ academic practice and academic integrity through teaching.
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Teaching Strategies
Fostering a culture of honesty, transparency, accountability and ethical behaviour through your teaching practice can play a key role in helping students develop their understanding of academic integrity. Strategies for strengthening academic integrity through your teaching are suggested below.
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Key Takeaways
- Fostering a culture of honesty, transparency, accountability and ethical behaviour through your teaching can play a key role in developing students' understanding of academic integrity.
- Clearly articulate to students what academic integrity means in the context of your discipline. Set clear expectations regarding 'good' academic practice.
- Self-reflection, peer questioning, active learning and formative assessment and feedback activities can support students to consolidate their thinking and develop insight into what 'good' academic practice looks like.
- Provide opportunities for students to make mistakes (in a low-stakes environment) and learn from them.
- Step and stage assessments across the semester to encourage iterative drafting of work, reduce end-of-semester assessment workload, and facilitate opportunities for formative review and feedback.
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Resources
- Fitzmaurice, M., & O’Farrell, C. Developing your academic writing: a handbook. N.b. This handbook is intended for students.
- Dunlosky, J.; Rawson, K.A.; Marsh, E.J.; Nathan, M.J.; & Willingham, D.T. (2013) Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques Psychological Science in the Public Interest 14:1, 4-58
- Miller, A.D., Murdock, T.B., Grotewiel, M.M. (2017) Addressing Academic Dishonesty Among the Highest Achievers. Theory Into Practice 56, 121–128.
- Mukasa, J., Stokes, L., Mukona, D.M. (2023) Academic dishonesty by students of bioethics at a tertiary institution in Australia: an exploratory study. International Journal for Educational Integrity 19 (3)
- Nicol D.J. & Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2004). Rethinking Formative Assessment in HE: a theoretical model and seven principles of good feedback practice.
- Nicol, D. J. & Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher Education 31(2), 199-218
- Pan, S.C., Sana, F., Samani, J., Cooke, J., Kim, J.A. (2020) Learning from errors: students’ and instructors’ practices, attitudes, and beliefs. Memory 28 1105–1122.