Overview
Academic integrity is a cornerstone of university education. It underpins the credibility of the qualifications awarded, the fairness of assessment processes and the trust between staff and students.
Yet, in an increasingly complex educational environment—shaped by digital innovation, diverse learner needs, and evolving academic pressures—academic integrity faces ongoing challenges. Upholding the core values of honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage is a shared responsibility between students, staff, and the institution.
Staff play a critical role in cultivating a learner-centred culture of academic integrity. This means modelling good practice, designing assessments that reduce the likelihood of misconduct, and applying university policy with consistency and care.
This five-part course is designed to support university staff in understanding and enacting their role in promoting academic integrity. It covers:
- Building and sustaining a culture of integrity
- Designing assessments that promote academic honesty
- Detecting and addressing breaches effectively
- Navigating the complexities of generative AI in student work
- Interpreting and applying institutional policy in practice
Each session will take approximately twenty minutes to complete. A companion workbook includes reflective activities and practical exercises to help you explore your understanding of integrity, respond to potential misconduct, rethink assessment design, reflect on student use of generative AI, and consider how you implement policy in your day-to-day work. Additional resources are provided to support continued professional development.
You’ll Learn to
Following the course, participants will:
- Define academic integrity and explain its significance in higher education
- Support students to understand and uphold academic integrity through clear guidance, inclusive practices, and accessible resources.
- Recognise common breaches of academic integrity, including plagiarism, contract cheating, collusion, and other forms of misconduct.
- Promote a culture of integrity across academic and professional services through proactive communication, role modelling, and consistent practice.
- Apply institutional policies and procedures effectively when addressing suspected breaches of academic integrity.
On earning your open badge award for this course, you will have achieved further recognition in the following domains of the National Professional Development Framework for Staff who Teach:
- Domain 1: Personal Development: The ‘Self’ in Teaching and LearningThis domain emphasises the personal values, perspectives and emotions that individuals bring to their teaching, including self-awareness, confidence, life experience and the affective aspects associated with teaching. It makes transparent the importance of the personal values that underpin any human interaction, especially those needed for authentic, engaged teaching and how these values are impacted by the work context.
- Domain 2: Professional Identity, Values and Development in Teaching and LearningThis domain emphasises the importance of the development and self-evaluation of professional/disciplinary identity and its associated roles, responsibilities and action plans.
- Domain 3: Professional Communication and Dialogue in Teaching and Learning At the core of this domain is the importance of the excellent, clear and coherent communication skills required for the changing learning environment.
- Domain 4: Professional Knowledge and Skills in Teaching and Learning This domain emphasises the importance of both disciplinary knowledge and disciplinary approaches to teaching (disciplinary pedagogies), while also drawing on inter-disciplinary experiences and approaches.
- Domain 5: Personal and Professional Digital Capacity in Teaching and LearningThis domain emphasises the importance of personal and professional digital capacity and the application of digital skills and knowledge to professional practice.
Course Developers
This open course has been developed by the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in partnership with:
Catherine O’Donoghue
SME CPID, TUS
Eimear Kelly
SME CPID, TUS
Dr. Geraldine McDermott
Reviewer, CPID, TUS
Tom Aherne
Learning Technologist, CAP, SETU
Mags Connolly
Learning Technologist, CAP, SETU
Ken Doyle
Design Specialist, CAP, SETU
Dr Nuala Harding
TUS Academic Integrity Course Development Project Lead
Enroll in this Course
Learn at your own pace on demand in a self study programme
Enrollment
Learn at your own pace with our on demand courses that are available online all-year-round. Self-study courses offer an on demand alternative and may result in a digital badge through our triad system of peer supported learning.
Acknowledgements
This course is part of My Digital Backpack, developed under the N‑TUTORR programme and funded by the European Union under the NextGenerationEU initiative, as part of Ireland’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP).