Strengthening Academic Integrity through your Teaching

Outline what academic integrity means in the context of your discipline and set clear expectations regarding ‘good’ academic practice: for example proper citation, collaboration expectations and etiquette, plagiarism, legitimate use of digital tools such as generative AI and other technologies. Provide specific examples of what ‘good’ academic practice looks like in your context and clarify common trip-hazards.

To ensure that expectations are clearly articulated and communicated to students.

Engaging students actively in such discussions can promote their understanding of the importance of ethical behaviours. For example, highlight why you include citations in lecture slides and use this as a stimulus for student discussions around the importance of reliability and accuracy in citation. Such ‘elaborative interrogation’ (Dunloskey et al, 2013) is likely key to supporting and strengthening academic integrity and to guiding students towards ‘good’ academic practice.

Enabling students to engage in think-pair-share, peer- and self-review, peer feedback, structured brainstorming, and minute-paper style activities, can support students to step away from rote learning, and ‘benchmark’ ideas of good academic conduct. Requiring students to engage actively with learning materials in live time enables learners to consolidate their thinking and supports them to identify the importance of mastery learning and knowledge 'ownership'.

Research indicates that students are more likely to engage in academically dishonest behaviour when they feel under pressure (Mukasa et al, 2023; Sweeney 2023; Miller et al 2017). By ‘stepping and staging’ assignments, the assessment process can become a series of manageable tasks with deadlines. As well as encouraging students to iteratively draft materials, this allows students to seek assistance at various points during the term, reducing the likelihood of resorting to dishonest practices due to overwhelming workload or time constraints.

Consider reducing the scaffolding available to students during teaching events gradually, bearing in mind that more junior students are likely to need assistance in differentiating between ‘legitimate’ web sources (e.g. JSTOR, STELLA-sourced articles, Wikipedia) and ‘illegitimate’ web sources (e.g. contract cheating services/essay mills pitched as ‘student supports’).

For example through low-stakes, formative assessment activities. Provide feedback, encourage students to reflect on their mistakes and consider what they will do differently next time. As highlighted by Metcalfe (2017) errors followed by corrective/discursive feedback can impact positively on learning. This also applies to the development of student understandings of academic integrity.

• 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.