Webinar: Gamification of Academic Integrity

Popular interventions in helping to educate students on academic integrity values and writing skills come in the form of learning modules set up online. However, research has shown that such interventions are often monotonous, with static content, some animations and multiple-choice questions. This is where the principles of game design come in. Academics have long recognised the benefits of using these principles to enhance learning and engagement, which can lead to knowledge retention and skills acquisition.

ENAI Gamification Working Group, in collaboration with the University of Wollongong in Dubai and Malaysia colleagues, are currently working to develop a beta version of an academic integrity game-based learning module with funding from the University of Wollongong (Australia) Teaching & Learning Funds to educate students on academic integrity values. This presentation provides a brief overview of the project aims and proposed outputs.

Integrity Games is a research-based online teaching tool on academic integrity for university undergraduate students. The tool is freely available in five European languages, including English and French. The tool aims to engage students in reflections on realistic and relevant academic integrity issues that lie in the grey zone between good practice and misconduct. It aims to 1) motivate students to learn more about academic integrity, 2) increase their awareness of the grey zone issues, and 3) deepen their understanding of misconduct – particularly plagiarism and falsification. To achieve these aims, Integrity Games presents four gamified cases taking students through an engaging narrative involving a series of choices on how to act in concrete situations where academic integrity is at stake. This presentation provides a brief overview of the aims and features of the Integrity Games, developed as an output of the H2020 INTEGRITY project.

Academic integrity, research integrity, integrity in business, and integrity in society are usually described as separate fields. The Erasmus+ Strategic partnership project “Bridging Integrity in Higher Education, Business and Society” (BRIDGE 2020-1-SE01-KA203-077973) seeks to create a bridge between the academic sphere, business and society to reach a broader understanding of interrelated aspects of integrity between these fields. The target groups of this project are early career researchers, i.e. master and PhD students, and their supervisors. Within the scope of the project, we developed a range of gamified educational material that can be found OA on the project outputs website. This presentation provides a brief overview of the gamified educational materials developed.

Dr Zeenath Reza Khan (University of Wollongong, Dubai)

Dr Zeenath Reza Khan is the Founding President and Board Member of the Centre for Academic Integrity in the United Arab Emirates. She is also an Assistant Professor of Responsible Information Systems at the Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences, and Program Director for Freshman Pathway Programs at the University of Wollongong in Dubai. Dr Khan is a national and international award-winning academic with more than 80 publications and an edited book titled Integrity in Education for Future Happiness (2021). Dr Khan’s research interests are in academic integrity, ethics in IT, teaching and learning, and STEM for girls.

Dr Mads P. Goddiksen (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

Dr Mads P. Goddiksen is part of the international team that developed the Integrity Games. The team also included researchers from the universities in Geneva and Debrecen and the Swedish company ImCode. Mads is a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark). He researches academic and research integrity as well as general philosophy of science. He holds an Msc in philosophy and physics and a PhD in philosophy of science.

Dr Sonja Bjelobaba (Uppsala University, Sweden)

Dr Sonja Bjelobaba is a researcher at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics as well as an associate professor in Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian at the Department of Modern Languages at Uppsala University (Sweden). Dr Sonja Bjelobaba is a vice-president of the European Network for Academic Integrity (ENAI) and co-ordinator of the Erasmus+ strategic partnership project Bridging Integrity in Higher Education, Business and Society (BRIDGE, 2020-2023). She defended her thesis at the University of Gothenburg, where she, as an educational developer, taught research integrity, postgraduate supervision courses and other courses for faculty relating to teaching and learning in higher education. Her research concentrates on academic and research integrity in the Balkans and Sweden.