Earlier this month, (5-7 August), I had the honour and pleasure of joining the Facing Academic Integrity Threats (FAITH) Conference in Çanakkale, Türkiye as keynote speaker and participant.
The conference was a multiplier event for dissemination of the FAITH project, led by Professor Salim Razi of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Türkiye, co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of European Union and Turkish National Agency, with project partners of European Network for Academic Integrity (ENAI), Czechia, University of Konstanz, Germany, University of Maribor, Slovenia, University of Porto, Portugal. Avid readers of the Integrity Matters blog may recall Salim’s blog announcing this conference back in May.
The conference brought together over 100 delegates from 20 countries to discuss, debate and share insights on topics relevant to FAITH, including academic integrity policies, pedagogy and support for students. One of the first event innovations I noticed was the use of the ICAI Fundamental Values in the naming of all the conference rooms; the main sessions were held in the ‘Honesty Hall’, we had breaks in the ‘Courage Area’ and concurrent sessions in the ‘Trust Hall’, ‘Fairness Hall’, ‘Respect Hall’ and ‘Responsibility Hall’. This felt like living the Fundamental Values, with brief delegate exchanges ‘Where are you next?’ ‘I’m in Responsibility’ denoting the meaningful locations! What a great idea!
The first keynote was delivered by Professor Sarah Eaton on the theme of ‘Policy with Integrity: Ethical Educational Polices in the Age of Generative AI’, who started by highlighting how we stand on the shoulders of two academic integrity policy giants: Tracey Bretag who led the development of a core elements framework (support, access, approach, responsibility, detail), and Irene Glendinning who has led large-scale investigations into academic integrity policies across Europe and beyond. Sarah drew attention to the need to involve equity in policies, to involve students and to remember that ‘Students are not our enemy. They are our future’.
Associate Professor Zeenath Reza Khan gave the second keynote on ‘Personal Responsibility for a Culture of Integrity in the Age of GenAI’ through a fascinating account of her own experiences at school. She explained how she went from being the ‘go-to girl for cheating’, motivated by seeing cheating as a way to gain friends, to being a model of ethical responsibility, achieved through an educational process in which her teachers helped her to learn to be fully accountable for her actions. This experience enables her to have significant understanding and sensitivity to students and to build this into successfully creating a culture of integrity.
My keynote focused on academic integrity pedagogy and the need to ensure that inclusion is built into teaching and supporting all students. I discussed the ways in which I use Universal Design for Learning (UDL) checkpoints for comprehension in all academic integrity teaching, involving helping students to draw on prior knowledge, demonstrating relationships between concepts, guiding information processing and providing opportunities to apply knowledge. I presented this with the example of a recent course I developed on ethical decision making with AI for all students at my institution. Of course I also used the occasion to promote and invite everyone to the International Day of Action for Academic Integrity on 16 October!
The conference included three presentations with results from the FAITH project, which our keynote topics aligned with: Project 1 about benchmarking standards for academic integrity policies in Europe; Project 2 about evidence-based guidance and training materials for teaching academic integrity; Project 3 about the Victims Support Portal for people needing support in stressful academic conduct situations, which has had 9,000 visitors since it was launched, demonstrating the value of this service.
In addition, the FAITH project themes were discussed through three panel sessions: on academic integrity policies, moderated by Irene Glendinning; on pedagogical approaches to promote academic integrity, moderated by Ece Zehir Topkaya; and on publishing with integrity in the new age of GenAI, moderated by Salim Razi.
Among the varied concurrent sessions, highlights for me were the sessions by Violeta Morari on ‘Fostering a Culture of Integrity’ at Munster Technological University, Ireland; Nalan Bayraktar Balkir’s session on ‘EFL Students’ Perspectives on Using GenAI with Academic Integrity in Language Learning and Academic Tasks’; Burcu Ozge Razi’s session on ‘Ethical Implementation of AI in the Process of Academic Writing’, Dita Henek Dlabolova and colleagues’ session on ‘Experiences and Support Needs Regarding Academic Integrity’; and Zeenath Reza Khan and Neha Hemani’s session on ‘Responsible Use of GenAI in Education’. It was particularly impressive that this last speaker, Neha, was an undergraduate student: what an achievement! A fitting end to an inclusive and inspiring conference which made a significant contribution to the work and community of academic integrity: congratulations to Salim Razi and all of his fantastic support team of staff and students!
References
CAST (2018). Universal Design for Learning. Available at https://udlguidelines.cast.org/
ICAI (2021). Fundamental Values. 3rd edition. Available at https://academicintegrity.org/resources/fundamental-values
The author's views are their own.
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