Academic Integrity and Misconduct: Importance, Implications, and a Game to Spread Awareness

This report discusses the importance of academic integrity in higher education, implications of academic misconduct, and a game produced to spread awareness. It also covers the skills learned while producing the game.

FURTHER
ACADEMIC
SKILLS

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY ..................................................................................................................................3
SECTION 1 .....................................................................................................................................3
Introduction of Academic Integrity ............................................................................................3
Importance of academic integrity in higher education ...............................................................4
Implications of academic misconduct .......................................................................................5
SECTION 2.....................................................................................................................................6
Steps that have taken for developing the game and difficulties encountered in producing the
game ...........................................................................................................................................6
Skills learned while producing the game in the academic year .................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES.................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Academic skills are the skills which handle the process of recognising , organising ,
retaining information. Academic skills helps students in enhancing their self confidence , self
esteem and belief. These are the skills which are use to study higher education effectively .
These types of skills helps students in enhancing their capability and also helps in their career
(Tiernan and et, al., 2022). Academic skills are the strategy that helps students to learn new
things . In this report the main focus is on the academic integrity that is avoiding plagiarism ,
cheating and misconduct. This is done by the educational institutions. This report is discussed on
the academic integrity and on there core values that is honesty , responsibility , trust , respect etc.
The importance of the academic integrity is also discussed that how it help students in higher
education or in any professional field. Academic misconduct also plays an important role in the
higher education , it describes how plagiarism , cheating etc. creates an impact on the higher
education on the student . In Section 2 of this report this is discussed that to spread the awareness
about the academic misconduct how the game has been produced and how it enhanced the skills
of an individual .
MAIN BODY
SECTION 1
Introduction of Academic Integrity
Academic Integrity is a commitment that includes honesty , trust , respect ,
responsibility and courage . It is a primarily core set of values which applies on everything that
the person do . Basically this can be say that these are the parts of the life of an student to
increase or to enhance the productivity(Boettler and et, al., 2022) . Academic integrity defines
the individual personality it describes that how the person is and how the individual act . Values
like honesty , fairness guides individual in their learning process. This helps in future to
understand and acknowledge success and how can the student can avoid misconduct . This is an

necessary value in the academic and professional environment . It is important to have the
academic integrity in the professional courses or in the higher education to gain the trust of the
leaders , teachers and colleagues and the team . Academic integrity plays an important role in
the students, teachers , researchers life to act honest and responsible in every part of their work.
Academic integrity avoid plagiarism, cheating and any kind of misconduct in higher
education(Bretag, 2018) .
Importance of academic integrity in higher education
Academic integrity plays an important role in the education system . It helps student in
higher education in several ways . Growth of digital learning in higher education or in
professional course play an major role in maintaining academic integrity. Here are the
importance of academic integrity in the higher education -
 Opportunities – For the growth of the student to acknowledged opportunities is
necessary. Career opportunity is depend on the academic integrity. Opportunities in
career is depend on the hard work and determination in higher education. Academic
integrity spreads fast and creating opportunities for the development in the professional
field(Fatemi and Saito, 2020). Academic integrity helps attract right people and
resources into the area of influence that will help in advancement of individual at next
level .
 Promotes Ethical Behaviour – Integrity is bounded in ethical behaviour such as
equality, sense of responsibility, trustworthiness etc.. Ethical behaviour is important in
higher education because it helps in recognises the work done by scholars , provides a
sense of responsibility to the instructor to perform their task efficiently. Programs like
training and development help students as well as instructor to build their academic
integrity.
 Build Reputations - The main core values of academic integrity helps institutions in
building the reputations. Institution who follow these cores values attract the right

learners , instructors and student and have positive reputation. Institution enhancement is
based on these core values of academic integrity(Ives and Nehrkorn, 2019).
 Promotes Creativity and Innovation - Academic integrity helps in addressing the clear
performance of the students and how can academic integrity helps student in improving
the performance. As mentioned that academic integrity is based on honesty and quality
values (Cooksey and McDonald, 2019). This states that the instructor gives full attention
to the student in return expected to express the honesty in the projects . This helps in
bringing creativity in students as well as in instructors .
 Skill development – Academic integrity is important in enhancing the skills of students
at different level. This helps in enhancing communication skills, researching skills,
technical skills of individual. Academic integrity helps in acknowledging the information
which enhance the knowledge of the student.
Implications of academic misconduct
Academic misconduct this phrase is used for when the individual don't behave with the
sense of integrity(Bretag, 2019). Academic misconduct is an action which is taken for the gain,
attempts to gain an unfair advantage. It is an type of cheating in the field of academic exercise.
Here are the some implications of academic misconduct -
 Plagiarism – This is the most famous and common example of the academic misconduct.
This states that it is the ideas , thoughts and content of one person which is copied by the
other person. It includes stealing ideas and writing of one's as their own . This is kind of
cheating but not actually a cheating . Plagiarism considered as dishonesty because it is
done by purpose . It is an unethical behaviour which is not acceptable in the professional
field(Sheard and et, al., 2018).
 Cheating - This is also considered as academic misconduct . While accomplishing the
academic activities when the student take use of any unauthorised information , material ,
devices is considered as cheating . For example copying something in exam from any

kind of source is considered as cheating . And in higher education there are strict rules
available regarding cheating.
 Misrepresentation - It states that the student made false statement which affects the
other party decision. This misconduct is done to gain the academic advantage with an
intention to influence the teacher or to deceive the teacher. This act is done intentionally
to gain the unwanted advantage .
 Duplicate Submission - In this the student uses the same presentation or research paper
to submit into different classes without the permission of instructor it known as duplicate
submission.
SECTION 2
Steps that have taken for developing the game and difficulties encountered in producing the
game
Steps that have taken in producing the game
To aware student about the academic misconduct , here are the certain steps which I have taken -
Firstly the idea came into my mind to produce the game so that I can spread awareness
about the academic misconduct like plagiarism between the students . To make it interesting and
innovative I decided to pick up the group of student to play the game .
In group there was total 10 students to play the game , to make it more interesting I decided them
to assigned a task that each and every student have to write a content of 500 words on any topic
and also I decided to put a time limit that is 2 hour which is more than sufficient to complete this
task .
To make it more creative , I decided to distribute prize to the winner so that the students can give
their best in this game . I made announcement, that the person who so ever have a minimum
amount of percentage of plagiarism will win this game and will get the prize also and the student

who will get the highest amount of percentage of plagiarism will lose the game and also have to
pay the price of losing this game .
Every student have to upload the file on the software of the institution so that I can identify the
percentage of plagiarism and announce the name of the winner accordingly .
This helped me in spreading awareness about the plagiarism between the student in an very
innovative way and also I got to know about the efficiency of individuals.
Difficulties that are encountered in producing the game
In producing or in implementing the game I faced many difficulties to spread awareness
about the academic misconduct . Here are some of difficulties which I faced -
 Decision making process – This is the foremost difficulty which I faced while producing
the game because it was so difficult for me to come up with this decision to bring this
game to spread awareness about academic misconduct between the student .
 Implementation - Implementing this game was the challenge for me. This was the full
process of thinking that how to implement this game to influence students. To implement
this game team work was necessary which leads me to convince my team member which
was difficult for me because they were not agreeing on my decision.
Skills learned while producing the game in the academic year
Academic integrity helped me in increasing my various skills . While producing this
game I have enhanced my several skills . Here are the some skills discussed below -
 Communication skills – This has also increased my communication skills because this
game required to connect the students and team members to make them understand about
this game . This was literally an absolute experience communicating with my team
member and students , this helped me in enhancing my skills and also build an strong
relation with them . This game required an multiple interaction with the students and the
team members.

 Leadership - This game was producing by me so I was the leader to implement this
game . This helped me in increasing my leadership quality like to develop strategies ,
communication with other members , identify the opportunities and threats of the game .
This also helped me into motivating the team members and help everyone in working
together. This also helped me in increasing my team work capacity which is one of the
factor of the leadership .
 Coordination - This skill required every one to come together and to focus on the same
project or game to accomplish this target . This also helped me in enhancing this skill to
coordinate with everyone with the help of different ways like written communication ,
mechanical devices etc.
CONCLUSION
From this report this can be concluded that the academic integrity plays major role in the
life of the student in the higher education. This report states the fact that how the honesty ,
respect , responsibility and fairness affects the life of academic student . These are the core
values of academic integrity . These cores guides individual in learning process. Academic
integrity have more importance because it brings opportunities , build reputation and promotes
ethical behaviour of the student . This report also includes academic misconduct which include
plagiarism, cheating , misrepresentation and many more. In this report game has also been
produced to spread the awareness about the academic misconduct to the students in an
innovative way . This is also been considered that how the academic integrity helps student in
enhancing their skills and how they faced the difficulties . This game has also enhanced the
skills of the individual who are producing the game as well as the student also. In last it can be
concluded that academic integrity is essential for the development of student.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Tiernan and et, al., 2022. The implementation of Precision Teaching for the improvement of
academic skills: A systematic review of the literature over thirty years. Behavioral
Interventions, 37(2), pp.505-528.
Boettler and et, al., 2022. Academic skills, community engaged, leadership, and global themed
first-year seminars: Comparisons in student success. Journal of College Student
Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, 24(1), pp.213-233.
Bretag, T., 2018. Academic integrity. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Business and
Management.
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.
Bretag, T., 2019. Academic integrity and embracing diversity.
Sheard and et, al., 2018, January. Informing students about academic integrity in programming.
In Proceedings of the 20th Australasian Computing Education Conference (pp. 113-
122).
Cooksey, R. and McDonald, G., 2019. How Do I Handle Academic Integrity Issues?.
In Surviving and Thriving in Postgraduate Research (pp. 689-726). Springer, Singapore.
Ives, B. and Nehrkorn, A., 2019. A research review: post-secondary interventions to improve
academic integrity. Prevention and detection of academic misconduct in higher
education, pp.39-62.