Inducting students into Academic Integrity: conceptual design of an online learning module

Academic Integrity (AI) is one of the central facets of student learning and can impact significantly on students‘ post-education life. Educational institutions have a central responsibility for developing a positive academic culture through policies and mechanisms that address and foster AI in their institutions. However, in practice, even where institutions have adopted formal AI mechanisms, some students still develop a poor understanding of the essential facets of AI, leading to unintentional AI breaches. Moreover, some students find it hard to contextualise the university-wide AI policies as part of their discipline. In addressing this issue, some universities have developed online, discipline-specific AI modules to enhance students‘ AI understanding. This paper discusses a discipline-specific online Academic Integrity Module (AIM) developed for built environment students at the University of Newcastle (UoN). The module was designed within the Blackboard environment to provide an online and interactive form of AI learning. Whilst the AIM draws heavily on AI policies at UoN, it contextualises this information as part of the built environment discipline and enables students to engage in self-paced AI learning and self-assessment.