 Integrity Important?
It is worthwhile to consider the different types of harm that can be potentially caused by breaches of academic integrity, as this can provide insight into areas that can be shortlisted for potential intervention. The categories of harm can be divided into three broad areas, as follows:
1. Harm to Scholarship
- Breaches of academic integrity undermine good scholarship. The harm can occur at many levels across learning and teaching. The most obvious harm lies in hampering effective assessment of what students have learned in their courses.
- Students who are not submitting work based on their own understanding and analysis of the content being studied are at risk of not meeting the learning outcomes set for their unit/course.
- Assessors marking work that has been copied, incorrectly cited or produced by another person altogether, cannot conduct a realistic appraisal of students’ competencies.
- Persistent and pervasive breaches of academic integrity in a course can have flow-on effects such as a skewed perception of standards and expectations relating to how students perform in the course. This can in turn impact the way the curriculum is designed in future courses.
- The practice of good scholarship is not just about demonstrating authentic learning in assessments. It is also about being part of an academic community, where members recognising and building on the contributions of other scholars. Failure to do this makes it more challenging to track how a theory, ideal, model or concept has evolved through the academic literature, over time.
2. Harm to Reputation and Trust
- If inappropriately managed, academic integrity breaches may damage students’ and staff confidence in the consistency and adequacy of academic integrity policies and procedures.
- Students who witness inconsistencies in how breach cases are may distrust their university’s ability to ensure fairness.
- Frequently occurring breaches may promote the normalisation of breach behaviours.
- Systemic academic integrity breaches that come to light have the potential to damage a university’s reputation – and in turn, the perceived quality of programs and graduates.
- Damaged trust can negatively affect students’ perception of their learning experience and the quality of their engagement with their institution.
- The reputation impact may extend into the employment market and graduates workplaces, particularly since breach behaviours committed at university have been cited as a strong predictor for similar behaviours being committed in the workplace.
3. Breach Behaviours Can 'Travel'
There is a connection between cheating behaviours across different levels of study and different environments. Studies have reported associations between academic integrity breaches committed by students and their propensity to commit dishonest behaviours in a professional environment (Sims 1993).
What Can Staff Do?
Taking an educative and proactive approach to promoting academic integrity can seem like a daunting prospect. The Arts L&T Team recommends three main courses of action
|Action||What does it involve?|
Know the relevant policies and procedures:
Know your students:
Know the risks and rewards:
Talk to your students about academic integrity as a fundamental component of their university experience, rather than only being related only to assessments (eg. referencing conventions). Academic integrity should be integrated into every aspect of unit design, delivery and student experience.
Have conversations about the importance and impact of academic integrity in university and in professional life.
Talk to your colleagues about their experiences in promoting and managing academic integrity in their units. Are there common challenges, and if so, how have others faced them?
Report suspected breaches as soon as possible.
Resources to Support Academic Integrity
This page is continually updated as changes to the University's academic integrity policy are being made.
Macquarie University Resources
- Academic Integrity Policy
- Managing and Reporting Academic Misco