Academic Integrity in Higher Education: Importance, Implications, and Skills Learned

This report discusses academic integrity, its importance in higher education, implications of academic misconduct, and skills learned in producing a game for Project 2. It highlights the qualities required for academic integrity, the significance of academic integrity for individuals and institutions, and the penalties for academic misconduct. The report also reflects on the challenges faced and skills developed during the game development process, including time management, innovation, and research skills.

BSc (Hons) Business Management with
Foundation
BMP3003
Further Academic Skills
Academic Integrity
Submitted by:
Name:
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Contents
Introduction 3
Section 1 3-5
An Introduction including a description of Academic Integrity
3
A discussion of the importance of academic integrity in higher
education 4
Discuss the implications of academic misconduct 5
Section 2 6-7
Reflect on the steps you have taken, and difficulties encountered in
producing the game for Project 2 6
Reflect on the skills you have learned this academic year and those
emphasized in producing your game 7
Conclusion 7
References 9

Introduction
Academic integrity can be referred as the act of avoiding plagiarism and
misconduct. It is referred as the moral code or ethical policy. The term academic
integrity was popularly identified by late Don McCabe. He is also considered as the
grandfather of academic integrity. Academic integrity is basically referred as the
expectations that is kept from the people who are a part of academic community.
The academic integrity must be conducted with utmost honesty, fairness, trust,
respect as well as responsibility. When there is a breach in the academic integrity, it
is called academic misconduct or academic dishonesty (Muhammad and et.al.,
2020). The report has highlighted concept of academic integrity along with the
importance as well as the implications of academic integrity. Further the report has
highlighted several skills and challenges that were witnessed during the game
development.
Section 1
An Introduction including a description of Academic Integrity
Academic integrity can be referred to the expectations that is kept from the
people who are a part of academic community. The academic integrity requires
several qualities that need to be followed, these are honesty, fairness, trust, respect
as well as responsibility. When there is a breach in the academic integrity, it is called
academic misconduct or academic dishonesty. It is important for the students to
uphold the academic integrity during the educational tenure. In order to uphold the
academic integrity, the students can contact their teachers in case they face any
kind of problems or issues related to the academics. It is important to maintain
academic integrity in order to enhance the reputation and further protect in the future
course as well. Also, maintenance of academic integrity helps the students to protect
themselves from the criminals (McKenzie, 2018).
In order to support academic integrity, it is essential to acknowledge the
means of the information through the citations or references of the site from where
the information has been derived. Further, the academic integrity can be assured
through reporting the research findings in an accurate manner as well as by abiding
the research policies. The information can be used in an appropriate manner in
accordance with the copyright as well as privacy policy. Academic integrity revolves

around the concept wherein an individual is required to act ethically or perform the
right tasks even during the challenging duration (Gamage, Silva and Gunawardhana,
2020).
A discussion of the importance of academic integrity in higher
education
Academic Integrity has a huge significance in higher education. The
importance of academic integrity lies with the individuals as well as the university.
Academic integrity is important in order to provide themselves with the opportunities
so that they can enhance their success by performing their tasks with utmost
honesty. Further, academic integrity helps the students to avoid the unfortunate
circumstances during their academic tenure such as failing in the assignments or
getting debarred from the university. Academic integrity helps in focusing upon the
foundation of the professional knowledge as well as practicing it in the actual
scenario as well (Fatemi and Saito, 2020).
Academic integrity plays a crucial role in terms of enhancing its significance
for university as well. The reputation of the university revolves around the context of
performance of the staff as well as the students. Hence the university is required to
set standards in order to maintain consistency and its trustworthiness in terms of
course as well as assessment in the community. It is essential for the university to
take the issue of academic integrity seriously so that the reputation of the university
can be taken seriously. Also, it is helpful in order to generate the sense of
accomplishment of high standards during the academic course as the learning was
based on the foundation of truth as well as respect.
Further, academic integrity has a significance in terms of academic
assessments as they have a huge role in influencing the ideas of an individual
through innovation and creativity. Also academic integrity helps in showing path for
building new knowledge within the individual. Also, academic integrity tends to
provide proper credit to the people whose research ideas and information has been
used which will lead to proper acknowledged and helps understanding the material
that has been used in the assessments and assignments during a specific duration.
Most importantly, academic integrity helps in having a better access to the
knowledge and information upon a specific topic. This plays a huge role in

development of knowledge within an individual wherein it essential for the students
to be true to themselves which will help the as an individual in the long term during
their career as well as academics (Eaton, 2020).
Discuss the implications of academic misconduct
There are several implications of academic misconduct. If the student fails to
comply with the several terms of academic misconduct, then they are required to
face several punishments. In accordance with the policy of the university, the
instructors are required limited to allow up to three academic penalty options if they
are found guilty in context of academic misconduct. The three penalties are namely,
fall in the grade for the assignment in question, reduction of the final grade during the
academic course which might also lead to failure during the course and the last
penalty is additional academic work. All these penalties are burdensome for the
students but they are introduced in order to maintain seriousness regarding the
academic integrity during the academic period of the students (Sefcik, Striepe and
Yorke, 2019).
Further, the students who are found guildy of academic misconduct have a file
which is created and it shows the student's record of academic dishonesty that is
performed by the student during the course of academics in the university or
schools. Also, this file is maintained for a time period of five years with the Office of
the Provost as well as the Vice President for Academic affairs. It depends upon how
severely the act of academic integrity is violated by the students or how repeatedly
the academic misconduct has been reported. Accordingly, the students are referred
for the disciplinary action to the dean of the Students Office.
It is important to take strict actions against the students found guilty of
academic misconduct so that the morale of the honest students who have performed
sincerely do not get degraded (Curtis And et.al., 2021).
Section 2
Reflect on the steps you have taken, and difficulties encountered in
producing the game for Project 2

Several steps were taken in order to draft a suitable game in order to manage
the academic integrity. The game has been developed to make students aware of
the academic misconduct and further minimise as well. There were various
difficulties and issues that were faced by the students while developing the game.
The several issues and challenges faced by the individual while the game
development have been discussed below (Ahmed, 2020).
 Contingencies- There can be situation where some incidents happen for
which no precautions are made prior which can disturb the planning of the
game as well as the game development. Several contingencies can be
technical glitch or a miscommunication.
 Internal conflicts- Further, during the process of game development process
there are certain probabilities of internal conflicts. Internal conflicts might
occur during certain decision making process wherein the people involved do
not approve upon a certain thing. This might be quite challenging when it
comes to develop a plan.
 Meeting the vision- Another challenge that might be faced during the course
of game development is to meet the vision of the game. The vision of the
game is to spread awareness regarding the academic integrity and further
ensure proper academic conduct. Hence, the game must be developed while
ensuring that it is able to accomplish its goal due to which the game was
actually launched.
 Technological disputes- One more challenge that was faced during the
accomplishment of the game is the technological dispute. Technological
dispute has been a challenge due to the software and the technical issues
that were faced. It is very important to have utmost knowledge regarding the
software that is to be used. Lack of technical knowledge might lead to
technological issues which further act as a challenge in game development.
Reflect on the skills you have learned this academic year and those
emphasized in producing your game
There are several skills that have been learned by me during the course of
academic year. In order to emphasize upon the skills that I have learned during the
academic tenure, I have produced the game which reflect upon the same skills. The

skills that I have developed during the academic period have been discussed below
in detail (Abdalla and Abdalla, 2021).
 Time management skills- The academic period has helped in enhancing my
time management skills and they have been equally focused while developing
the game. The time management skill has been enhanced by performing
several tasks within project report by a particular writer. Further, there have
been several complex tasks that can be made simple by dividing them within
smaller denominations in terms of time period for the completion. The time
management skill has helped he students to be highly productive by utilizing
the time in the right manner in order to fulfill several personal and professional
tasks.
 Innovation skills- The academic year has helped me in enhancing the
innovation skills. Due to academic integrity, my performance of several tasks
in several projects have certainly led to the development of the creativity or
the innovation skills. The reason behind development of the creativity skills is
that the students were asked to develop their contents in an appropriate
manner so that the report can be structured in a prominent manner.
 Research skills- The academic tenure has also helped in developing the
research skills as an individual wherein the students were required to conduct
a proper research so that proper knowledge can be gained in order to prepare
the report. It has helped in materializing facts and information through the
several online sources. This skill has helped in increasing the performance
level of the individual along with level of concentration which is necessary in
order to accomplish the academic goals of integrity (Stoesz and Los, 2019).
Conclusion
It can be concluded from the report that academic integrity plays a crucial role
in the life of an individual. Academic integrity can be referred to the expectations that
is kept from the people who are a part of academic community. The academic
integrity requires several qualities that need to be followed, these are honesty,
fairness, trust, respect as well as responsibility. Academic integrity is of huge
significance for the individual as well as the institution. The report has further
concluded the several issues that were faced while developing the game along with

the several skills like time management, research skills and innovation skills that
have been focused through the game and further have been developed through out
the academic session.

References
Books and Journals
Abdalla, M. and Abdalla, M., 2021, July. The Grey Hoodie Project: Big tobacco, big tech, and
the threat on academic integrity. In Proceedings of the 2021 AAAI/ACM Conference
on AI, Ethics, and Society (pp. 287-297).
Ahmed, K., 2020. Academic integrity: Challenges and strategies for Asia and the Middle
East. Accountability in research, 27(5), pp.256-270.
Curtis, G.J. And et.al., 2021. Developing and evaluating nationwide expert-delivered
academic integrity workshops for the higher education sector in Australia. Higher
Education Research & Development, pp.1-16.
Eaton, S.E., 2020. Academic integrity during COVID-19: reflections from the university of
calgary.
Fatemi, G. and Saito, E., 2020. Unintentional plagiarism and academic integrity: The
challenges and needs of postgraduate international students in Australia. Journal of
Further and Higher Education, 44(10), pp.1305-1319.
Gamage, K.A., Silva, E.K.D. and Gunawardhana, N., 2020. Online delivery and assessment
during COVID-19: Safeguarding academic integrity. Education Sciences, 10(11),
p.301.
McKenzie, A.M., 2018. Academic integrity across the Canadian landscape. Canadian
Perspectives on Academic Integrity, 1(2), pp.40-45.
Muhammad, A. and et.al., 2020. Factors affecting academic integrity in E-learning of Saudi
Arabian Universities. An investigation using Delphi and AHP. IEEE Access, 8,
pp.16259-16268.
Sefcik, L., Striepe, M. and Yorke, J., 2019. Mapping the landscape of academic integrity
education programs: what approaches are effective?. Assessment & Evaluation in
Higher Education.
Stoesz, B.M. and Los, R., 2019. Evaluation of a tutorial designed to promote academic
integrity. Canadian Perspectives on Academic Integrity, 2(1), pp.3-26.