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Embed academic integrity

Throughout the assessment and feedback lifecycle in a unit, there are opportunities to embed academic integrity strategies related to education, prevention and disciplinary practices.

Assessment for academic integrity diagram

- Select assessment that is purposeful and values the evidencing of complex and higher-order thinking. Consider outputs that are less likely to be able to be generated using artificial intelligence (e.g., creation of new knowledge, critical thinking)
- Consider programmatic assessment, nested tasks, reflective components and formative assessment to demonstrate evidence of learning.
- Choose assessment that is contextual and designed to promote learning.
- Renew and update assessment before the teaching period.
- Design assessment for academic integrity.
- Select a variety of tasks based on the required evidence and performance levels.
- Vary data sets, scenarios and details and link to specific contexts.
- Write assessment tasks to explicitly develop academic integrity behaviours.
- Select tasks for their formative, summative or diagnostic purposes.
- Choose task types less likely to be outsourced (e.g., viva voce, authentic conditions).
- Develop clear task instructions, rubrics and expectations amongst students and the teaching team.
- Ensure all relevant information is in one place and is consistently communicated to all students.
Watch Tim Fawns and Ari Seligmann discuss programmatic approaches to assessment, the integration of AI, new options for securing assessments, and strategies for making learning more visible.
Ari refers to a workflow that provides guidance on the issues and steps for crafting AI statements required of all assessed tasks and recommended for all other tasks - go to AI statements to view the workflow
- Ensure students understand why they are being assessed and what they should be learning.
- Discuss appropriate ways of working, cooperating and discussing with peers.
- Identify inappropriate ways of working or seeking support.
- Provide examples of what success looks like and discuss the performance criteria.
- Introduce students to conventions, formats or disciplinary thinking.
- Use tasks to prompt conversations about standards and practices.
- Develop evaluative judgement and assessment literacy; co-create or use established rubrics with students as evaluative exercises.
- Unpack the uncertainty about integrity and clarify common grey areas for behaviour (e.g., artificial intelligence software, collaboration and sharing).
- Teach students how to use similarity detection software to improve their academic practice.
- Produce an assessment FAQ to keep all students on the same page.
- Target support at common motivators for dishonesty (e.g., poor language proficiency).
- Ensure similarity detection software is used at the submission point.
- Allow students to use drafting processes to refine their academic practice and explain what similarity reports mean and how to act on them.
- Ensure in situ tasks have parameters without loopholes (e.g., permitted vs prohibited).
- Engage in random audits of students and assessment tasks (pre-communicated).
- Secure the most important tasks and use the others for education.
- Ensure the teaching team is aligned in their understanding of acceptable practice and required evidence to substantiate claims.
- Conduct calibration meetings to establish an understanding of possible indicators of dishonesty, marking criteria and feedback approach.
- Establish strategies for consistency and quality of feedback (e.g., templates, peer review).
- Detect and pursue suspected breaches according to policy and procedure.
- Provide feedback specifically on academic integrity practices.
- Use feedback to foster strong connections and build student satisfaction.
- Link students to supports to help them respond to feedback.
- Develop a shared understanding of ‘triggers’ amongst markers.
- Ensure penalties, consequences and adjustments to grades are clearly communicated and applied appropriately and consistently.
- Use moderation practices to assure the quality of marking as well as the quality of investigation into potential misconduct.
- Provide feedback specifically relating to academic integrity and link to support.
- Adopt a dialogic approach to feedback and build relationships.
- Take note of what has and has not worked throughout the teaching period.
- Identify trends, patterns, strengths and weaknesses in the security regime.
- Seek out and act on student feedback.
- Use data to inform changes (e.g., SETU, discussions, breach data).

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Embed academic integrity

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