Academic Integrity and Game Production Reflection Report

This report delves into the critical concept of academic integrity, emphasizing its significance for students in higher education and beyond. It defines academic integrity as adhering to honesty, fairness, respect, and responsibility within an academic setting. The report outlines the importance of academic integrity for both students and institutions, highlighting its role in fostering learning, assessment, professional careers, innovation, and institutional reputation. It then addresses the implications of academic misconduct, such as plagiarism and cheating, which can lead to legal and social consequences, inaccurate assessments, and detrimental effects on professional life and self-esteem. The second part of the report provides a detailed reflection on the process of producing a digital interactive game designed to help students reduce plagiarism, including planning, design, resource gathering, coding, and marketing. It also discusses challenges faced, such as fundraising, revenue strategies, and marketing efforts, alongside the skills developed during the academic year, including problem-solving, IT skills, and time management. The report concludes by reiterating the crucial role of academic integrity in academic and professional success.

Academic Integrity

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
SECTION 1......................................................................................................................................1
Academic integrity introduction and description.........................................................................1
Importance of academic integrity in higher education................................................................1
Implications of academic misconduct..........................................................................................2
SECTION 2......................................................................................................................................4
Reflecting on the steps taken and difficulties encountered in producing the game.....................4
Difficulties encountered while producing the game....................................................................5
Skills I learned during academic year which helped me in producing the game.........................5
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Academic integrity is the expectations of teachers, students and other stakeholders of a academic
community to act with honesty, fairness, respect and responsibility. Following academic integrity
is expected from both students and faculties in a academic institution. For students it is important
because it help them to learn and grow while for institutions it is important because it increase
their goodwill and performance. Member in an academic setting play their parts to follow
academic integrity and avoid academic misconducts (Alias and et.al., 2019). In this report, we
will discuss importance of academic integrity and implications of academic misconduct. Second
part of this report will include a reflection showing steps taken and problems encountered while
producing the game. The reflection will also show what skills I have learned during the academic
year.
SECTION 1
Academic integrity introduction and description
Academic integrity is commitment to demonstrate moral behaviour in an academic institution.
All educational institutions specially universities are expected to support academic integrity. It is
equally important for students and universities. If students practice academic integrity during
their academic life this can change their behaviour in a positive way which help them throughout
their life. There are some rules and regulations in every academic institution and by following
these rules students can demonstrate academic integrity. If students perform their academic
activities ethically then it leads an organisation towards academic integrity (Civelek, Liu and
Marston, 2018). Every university should act fair and honestly with each student to support
academic integrity.
Importance of academic integrity in higher education
Academic integrity is important for institutions and students both. In higher eduction it become
even more important because it help students throughout their life. Academic integrity make
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positive changes in a students behaviour which can help them in future or in their professional
life. Some of the importance of academic integrity are mentioned below.
Academic integrity help students in learning – If students do their assignments and other
academic activities on their own them they can learn new things. If they seek for short cuts of do
their assignments by cheating it decreases their chance to learn something new. Universities give
assignments and task to students so that they can learn new things and put their original thoughts
on the paper (Kier, 2019). Teachers give feedbacks to students according to their assignments. If
the assignments are not done by them these feedbacks become of no use for them.
Assessing students – A assignments main aim is to assess the students by assignment and other
tasks universities evaluate how much their students are learning. Any sort of academic
misconduct in their assignments can create problems for the universities in assessing the
students. Academic integrity in important for the students to analyse if their students are learning
or not. Activities like cheating and plagiarism prevents students to get judged accurately.
Professional careers – For students, academic integrity is also important because it teach them
how to learn and behave in a institution. Students start working in an ethical way which can help
them in future. For better professional careers students need to behave in a ethical way because
in universities and academic institution the consequences of cheating and copying are not as bad
as they can be in their professional life.
New Idea – If students keep copying others assignments it restricts them to think. Academic
integrity enables every students to do their own works which increases new ideas and
innovations. To solve a situation two students can think of two different ways, but they look to
cheat then they do not even try to think.
Reputation of a institution – A university or other academic institution need to practise
academic integrity because it increases their goodwill in the educational industry. Any case of
academic misconduct can create doubts in peoples mind and it can decrease the credibility of the
universities degrees and diplomas (Ternes and et.al., 2019). If students in a university pass their
semesters by cheating then it creates a perception in peoples mind that students passed from that
particular university are not qualified enough.
Implications of academic misconduct
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Academic misconduct can be defined as cheating that happen in and academic institution. It is a
very big problem in front of academic institution because nowadays students are performing
various activities which leads to academic misconduct. It gives them an unfair advantage over
other students. There are various activities which can be considered as academic misconduct.
Plagiarism, cheating, buying assignments and other unauthorised collaboration are all unethical
or illegal activities in which students are getting involved (White, 2020). Academic misconduct
is also known and academic dishonesty, when students get caught doing any such activities they
may need to face penalties and other serious consequences. Some of the implications of
academic misconduct are mentioned below -
Legal Consequences – Number of students breaching the academic integrity is increasing day
by day and because of this the ways of catching the cheating are also improving. If a student gget
caught doing any academic misconduct they can face legal consequences. For example, if a
students complete their assignment with the help of other's content or assignment it is called
plagiarism. The original owner of the content can take the legal actions against the students in
such cases.
Social Consequences – If students keep breaching academic integrity they may develop a habit
of cheating and this habit can reduce the value of hard work from their life. Students with such
habits tend to cheat at their professional life also.
Inaccurate assessment – Academic misconduct makes it hard for the teachers to assess students.
Assignments which are not done by the students disguise teachers to assess students. This can
cause universities to grant a degree to someone who is not qualified enough.
Effect in professional life – With the help of academic misconduct a students may pass
university without get caught. But they can not success in their professional life. After seeing the
degree a students can get a job but to perform various operations in the job they need skills and
knowledge which they lack because they breach academic integrity (Parnther, 2020). Traits like
fairness, honesty, responsibility are crucial to get a sustainable professional career.
Self Esteem – Academic misconduct lead students towards feeling guilty and low self esteem.
Losing self esteem can create many other problems in students professional career and other life
aspects.
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SECTION 2
Reflecting on the steps taken and difficulties encountered in producing the game
The game I produced is a digital interactive game which help students to learn how they can
reduce the level of plagiarism. The game can be played by a single students at a time and
students from any level can play the game and learn from it. I followed a process which involve
various steps to make the game. Each step is mentioned below -
Step - 1
In this step I did all the necessary planning and research for the game. I only had the idea about
the game but in this step I collected all the necessary data and insights which helped me to create
the game. I planned various process required, budget and timeline for the project in this step.
Step – 2
In this step, I had all the data and information I need and I also had a rough idea about how the
game should look. In this step a prepared designing document by putting market data and my
thoughts together. With the help of this document I decided how the game should look exactly.
Step – 3
In this step I collected all the resources I need. After my design was final I decided which
software I need to start designing and code the game. I decided that the game will be a three
dimensional game so the decisions about designing software were crucial. I also raised finance,
bought a high performance computer in this step.
Step – 4
I did most of the work in this step. I had all the data and resources available in this step and I
started coding and designing the game in this step. I created the game exactly like I thought with
the help of C++ language. After the game was ready I did tests to check if the program is running
well or not. I encountered few bugs and resolved them in this step. I run the game on different
platforms and asked peoples to check the game and give me a feedback so that I can know if
there is any scope of improvement in the game. At the end of this step I had a the final game in
my hand.
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Step – 5
After producing the game I run various marketing campaigns online to increase the awareness
about the game. Also I market my game to various educational institutions which helped me to
interact with my target customer base which was students.
Difficulties encountered while producing the game
Raising funds – I faced many problems in raising fund for production of the game. I visited
various banks and various fund raising websites but failed to raise fund. For production of the
game I wanted a high performance computer and some paid software. For that I raised fund
through a online fundraisers.
Revenue Strategy – I faced many difficulties to make a monetisation strategy for the game.
There were many options available by which I could have monetise the game but these strategies
can effect the performance of the game in the market (Sefcik, Striepe and Yorke, 2019). I
encountered problems in deciding the correct monetisation strategy for the game.
Creating game awareness – Marketing is not a easy task and being an unprofessional it is even
more difficult to do marketing of a product or service. I run various online marketing campaigns
and response from these campaigns was very bad initially. I also visited different universities and
academic institutions to create awareness abut the game but got negative response from them.
Skills I learned during academic year which helped me in producing the game
Problem solving skills – This skill is important for every individual in any industry. While
producing the game I made some hard decision which require critical thinking and analysis of
the situation. An individual can not learn this skill with books one can only learn this skill by
being in situations which require such skills.
IT Skills – I designed the whole game on my own and for designing I used some software which
I have never used before. It improved my skills of designing and using these software. Also this
project helped me improving my coding skills. Finding bugs in the game and removing them was
not easy it needed professional programming skills and after making the game I am positive with
my programming skills.
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Time Management Skills – This academic year I did various assignments and projects and I
have learned the importance of time management for completing a project. Initially I had
problems in managing time but with time have developed this skill. I managed to produce my
game in time in spite of being late in the programming stage of the game. This is also a skill
which is needed for producing the game but it can help an individual in professional or personal
life (Ahmed, 2020).
CONCLUSION
In this report, it is concluded that academic integrity is crucial for students to thrive in their
academic and professional life. Students should behave in a way which demonstrate academic
integrity. In this report we discussed the implications of academic misconduct. Further in this
report we discussed steps I took to produce the game and what difficulties I encountered during
these steps. The report also discusses skills which I have learned this year which is important for
producing a game.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Ahmed, K., 2020. Academic integrity: Challenges and strategies for Asia and the Middle
East. Accountability in research, 27(5), pp.256-270.
Alias and et.al., 2019. Student learning time: A needs analysis for university students’ time
management skills. In Proceedings of the Regional Conference on Science, Technology
and Social Sciences (RCSTSS 2016) (pp. 125-134). Springer, Singapore.
Civelek, I., Liu, Y. and Marston, S.R., 2018. Design of free-to-play mobile games for the
competitive marketplace. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 22(2), pp.258-
288.
Kier, C.A., 2019. Plagiarism intervention using a game-based tutorial in an online distance
education course. Journal of Academic Ethics, 17(4), pp.429-439.
Parnther, C., 2020. Academic misconduct in higher education: A comprehensive review. Journal
of Higher Education Policy And Leadership Studies, 1(1), pp.25-45.
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.
Ternes and et.al., 2019. Academic misconduct: An examination of its association with the dark
triad and antisocial behavior. Personality and Individual Differences, 138, pp.75-78.
White, A., 2020. Interactive approaches to learning about academic integrity: the role of fun and
games. In A Research Agenda for Academic Integrity (pp. 86-99). Edward Elgar
Publishing.
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