Academic Integrity: whose writing is it? Can we stop the plagiarism pandemic?

Academic Integrity (AI) within Higher Education (HE) has attracted a wide range of attention from the media due to a growing international concern, particularly in relation to student’s use of essay mills (Shepherd, 2022) and the development of artificial intelligence within academic fields (Gleason, 2022). Whilst concerning, this relates to a limited number of student cases within the University of Worcester, where the use of plagiarism software has led to a surge in academic integrity cases and subsequent penalties awarded to students.
In response, two University Academic Integrity Leads were appointed to tackle this growing issue with a brief to design a programme of education and training for staff and students on academic integrity principles and practice. The aim of this programme was to change the culture and values of students and staff on assessment writing and practice alongside the operationalisation of the AI systems and processes.A cross-university focus group was established and as a result, four distinct themes were established: Policy and Procedures, Resources, Staff and Student Training and Assessment. A multi-disciplinary approach to addressing the themes continued, resulting in the development of an online staff training programme in academic integrity, a student training workshop as part of their study skills package, an automated process of referring academic integrity cases and a consistent approach to the reviewing cases. Finally, a review, consultation and re-write of the academic misconduct policy.
The next stage of this project is to evaluate the impact on staff and students.