Whose Integrity Is It Anyway (1)

Mary-There Kennedy discusses the concept of academic integrity and explores who owns it. She raises the question of whether it belongs to the institution, lecturers, students, or society as a whole. The definition of academic integrity is discussed, as well as the values associated with it. Kennedy also emphasizes the importance of trust in upholding academic integrity and suggests that it is a form of good academic citizenship. The role of regulation and the balance between self-regulation, supported regulation, and enforced regulation are also examined. Factors that can lead to breaches of academic integrity are identified, and the importance of targeted educational interventions is highlighted. In conclusion, Kennedy suggests that everyone has a role in ensuring academic integrity, but staff and students are the key players in upholding and defining it. Hi everyone, this is Mary-There Kennedy, Academic Integrity Lead. This is the first of our Give Me Ten Minutes On segments produced by the Academic Integrity Unit. It's entitled Whose Integrity Is It Anyway? This presentation is designed to support the materials that are available on our Academic Integrity Unit webpage and I would encourage you to seek out the materials that are available there. So this presentation is an exploration of who owns academic integrity. So, let's look into this a little further. Who owns academic integrity? Who are we protecting? Maybe it belongs to the institution. Are we protecting the institution? After all, it's the institution that often sets the policies and procedures relating to academic integrity. Maybe it belongs to lecturers. After all, they're the individuals who usually detect and report concerns relating to academic misconduct. Maybe it belongs to students. After all, they are the individuals receiving the qualification. We're protecting them from others gaining an unfair advantage, perhaps an assessment. Should an individual student or students define what academic integrity means to them? Or maybe academic integrity belongs to society as a whole. Does society as a whole define what we are willing to accept? Does society define the standards we want to protect? Or maybe it belongs to everyone or maybe it belongs to some groups more than others. What do you think? Who do you think it belongs to? Who are we protecting? So let's pause for a moment and take a look at the definition of academic integrity. What is it and who is defining it? The European Network for Academic Integrity defines academic integrity as compliance with ethical and professional principles, standards and practices and consistent system of values that serves as guidance for making decisions and taking actions in education, research and scholarship. The National Academic Integrity Network of Ireland of which UL is a member has adopted this definition. So let's pause for a moment and take a look at the elements of that definition. It's compliance with ethical and professional standards and practices. Who's defining those standards? How are they agreed upon? Are they the same in every institution in every country? Do they change over time as innovations or challenges emerge such as generative AI? There's quite a bit to unpick here and hopefully we can do that in the next few minutes. The International Centre for Academic Integrity outlines six values relating to academic integrity and these are trust, responsibility, courage, honesty, fairness and respect. The ICAI indicates that there are three key stakeholders with a role to play in upholding these values. Those are students, faculty staff and by that we mean all individuals working within a faculty and the institution as a whole. We have a much more detailed discussion on these values as they relate to each stakeholder on the Academic Integrity website so please feel free to check that out. It's notable to indicate that the ICAI adopt this general micro, meso and macro level structure when discussing these values. However, the document in which they outline these values also acknowledges the role that they play in relation to society as a whole. As an academic integrity unit in the work that we do and the information we provide, including the development of an academic integrity policy and academic misconduct procedures, they are based on these core values. We recognise the importance of each of these values to every stakeholder in our institution and the role that each stakeholder has in upholding these values. But maybe we could take a step back and think about how these values in relation to academic integrity are important to society as a whole. The next part of my discussion I have entitled Academic Integrity and the Social Contract. That seems like quite a lofty title, doesn't it? Well, I think if we think about academic integrity essentially as being a type of social contract that the public have with the institution, in our case the University of Limerick, the general public entrusts the higher level institution and those who regulate and accredit these institutions to qualify only graduates of a certain calibre who meet expectations that have been applied to those individuals during their course of study. So the general public are entrusting the higher level institution to define and maintain these standards. Also, there is a trust between the institution and faculty staff that these rules and guidelines are being implemented and upheld and also from a student viewpoint that students are upholding the values of academic integrity. So trust is implicit or really important in every aspect of the relationship related to academic integrity. Indeed, upholding academic integrity could be seen to be good academic citizenship. So academic citizenship as it's defined here as having personal, professional, societal and technical dimensions to it. The institution supports or provides an environment in which good academic citizenship can flourish and part of that is having academic integrity as a cornerstone of that institution. So really society is entrusting that academic and citizenship is alive and healthy, that the overall aim of institution and similarly faculty, staff and students within an institution is to uphold and progress professional standards that is academic citizenship and there is an understanding between staff and students that this is a foundation block of education that enables enterprise and innovation. So where is the role of regulation in all of this and how do we strike the balance in terms of regulation? The very existence of regulation, we might think about the role of the institution. They define what integrity is or academic integrity is and maybe in the past we have really thought about an institution upholding academic integrity because they defined rules and regulations around academic misconduct, they applied sanctions to individuals etc. But increasingly these days academic integrity is being framed in a more positive light. There is a sense of pride associated with an individual student, a faculty member, an institution and upholding the ICAI six core values. So to that end it's not necessarily up to the institution alone in defining and upholding the rules in relation to academic integrity. It's not just any war about the institution policing students. So in the first instance we think about the role of self-regulation of individual learning and the individual's responsibility and that's a really important part of higher education that the learner themselves has a desire and an appetite to learn and understand and address gaps in their knowledge. So when it comes to academic integrity a student should be able to seek out information on academic integrity, that they understand what the rules are in relation to assessments and that they're able to uphold these rules. Supported regulation is where an institution gives us a general framework or supports to students to help them to uphold academic integrity. So that might be like us as an academic integrity unit providing training and education, the provision of induction materials, the provision of citation and referencing workshops and other work by other teams and departments across the university. The individual student doesn't necessarily have to go out themselves and find out that information is presented to them but of course the extent to which an individual student engages with that information is up to them. And then there is enforced regulation and that's where an institution has a certain set of policies and procedures that are implemented when assessment regulations are broken and that might include investigations and sanctions being applied. So there is a balance to be struck between self-regulation, supported regulation and enforced regulation and this mirrors other aspects of regulation in our society. So we might think about driving as an example. We rely on individual members of the public not to break the law to practice good driving behaviours. That is a type of self-regulation. We provide training, we have certain expectations about what it takes to get a licence and we run road safety campaigns to reinforce good driving behaviours. So that is a type of supported regulation. And then we have things like speed detection cameras that catch people who are breaking the speed limit and who are breaking the law and penalties are applied to these individuals. So that is a type of enforced regulation. And then we need to be aware of factors that can lead to breaches of academic integrity. So things like having an overly onerous assessment burden or the educational context of an individual, the socio-cultural expectations that an individual might bring with them to an education setting or the psychological and situational factors that might affect an individual's performance or how they behave in relation to assessments. So if we are equipped with this knowledge and the factors that can predispose an individual to breaching academic integrity, we can target our educational information or educational interventions at specific groups of individuals or specific behaviours. And in doing so, as an academic integrity unit, we can seek to support different types of regulation. So in conclusion, in my opinion, it's a very complex interplay between all of us in terms of who owns academic integrity. We all own it, but some stakeholders have a much more active role in ensuring that it is upheld. Society have nearly an unspoken and general expectation around good academic citizenship. The institution as a whole owns integrity through policy and procedures they define, but staff and students are really the key players in all of this. These are the parties that are central in upholding and actively agreeing on what academic integrity is and ensuring that it is a centrepiece of our education system. The next issue, I suppose, is how artificial intelligence is affecting academic integrity. We as a society are just beginning to grapple with the ethical and philosophical arguments associated with the use of this technology. The academic integrity unit has information on its website about the use of gen AI and assessments, and we will be exploring this in much more detail in future editions of Give Me About 10 Minutes On. I hope you have found this recording helpful. Here are some of the references that I have used or referred to during the presentation, and I hope you will tune in for future editions of our educational segments. Thank you very much.