Developing and evaluating nationwide expert-delivered academic integrity workshops for the higher education sector in Australia

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 2019, the Australian higher education regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), commissioned a team of academic integrity experts to design and facilitate a series of national workshops, with the aim of increasing academic integrity knowledge and building a culture of integrity across the higher education sector. As a team, we investigated whether these three-hour workshops would make a measurable difference to workshop participants’ awareness of academic integrity issues and their confidence in their own institutions’ practices. Three hundred and forty-two (342) workshop participants (representing 75.7% of attendees) completed pre-workshop and post-workshop surveys regarding their awareness of academic integrity issues and their confidence in their institutions’ academic integrity practices. Results from the post-workshop surveys showed that the participants expressed significantly increased awareness about the Model Statement of Commitment to Academic Integrity, Australian and international academic integrity research, and ways to promote academic integrity. In addition, the participants expressed increased confidence in their institutions’ risk-mitigation strategies and staff members’ ability to detect contract cheating. However, these results were moderated by institution size and institution type (university vs. independent higher education provider). The evaluation data indicates that even a short staff development workshop can make a difference to participants’ understanding and knowledge of academic integrity. We conclude that this type of focused and evidence-based professional development can make an important contribution to the development of a culture of academic integrity across the higher education sector, and can provide participants with avenues for subsequent professional development and institutional policy improvement.