Practical tips for teaching academic integrity in the digital age

Abstract

Background: Medical education, as with other areas of healthcare education, is susceptible to cheating, with national and international examples cited in the literature. There are documented examples in the lay press, but limited scholarly activity in the field, which can be a challenging area to research and tackle. We have begun to explicitly address academic integrity within our undergraduate curriculum, including a focus on plagiarism, selfplagiarism, and covert sharing of questions. We believe this is an important curricular topic as exhibiting unprofessional behaviours can correlate with professional practice and can potentially have implications for practitioners and patients. Aim: To present 12 tips on teaching academic integrity in the digital age to medical students. Method: The tips presented are based on our experiences of teaching academic digital integrity to medical students, primarily in the form of a scenario based quiz. We do also extrapolate from content on academic integrity elsewhere within our professionalism syllabus. Results: The tips suggest that early, contemporary and contextualised material that is co-produced with students may offer a useful prophylactic approach to teaching about academic integrity. Conclusions: The principles presented could be adapted to other healthcare students and settings, including postgraduate education.

Back to the Classroom: Educating Sessional Teaching Staff about Academic Integrity

“…Training programs that address academic integrity issues would assist in ensuring that sessional academic staff are equipped to deal with academic dishonesty when it surfaces and are aware of proactive measures that can be taken to minimise opportunities for students to commit academic dishonesty (Volkov et al 2011). Younis and Gishen (2019) contend that educating academic staff on academic integrity issues can also reduce the acceptance of cheating by students as an integral part of an educational environment.…”

A Phenomenological Study on Academic Cheating behaviors Exhibited by Visually Impaired College Students

“…Various studies have found emerging and critical topics that contain deeper investigation into academic integrity (Eaton & Dressler, 2020). There is a critical need for students to consider the implications and importance of academic integrity as currently, the literature highlights the issue of academic cheating (Younis & Gishen, 2019). Cheating and relative practices of cheating depend on cultural backgrounds according to the different perspectives of students (Ewing et al, 2019).…”