A tale of two cities: Implementing a developmental approach to academic integrity in two Australian universities

As Australian universities expand further into the global international student market and move to widen their participation pathways to realise the Bradley (2008) targets for increased participation in higher education, academic integrity is likely to come under increasing scrutiny. Recent AUQA audit reports have highlighted the need for Australian universities to ensure that their systems and management of academic quality are robust. Universities in Australia have therefore been forced to evaluate and in some cases reconsider their approaches to academic integrity. This paper reports on the activities of two Australian universities of similar size and composition and how they have responded to the increased challenge of maintaining flexible, robust and relevant policies and procedures to address academic misconduct. It is demonstrated that in both cases an underlying value steering their repositioning has been an emphasis placed on a developmental approach to academic integrity to foster ‘the ethical student’ by focusing attention on scaffolding students’ understanding of the expectations and conventions of academic scholarship in their contexts. While both universities share similar goals they have embarked on two different strategies. This paper first outlines how University of Tasmania employed ‘Turnitin’ and an Academic Writing Module as an institution wide strategy aimed at assisting students to understand academic integrity by developing their academic skills. Second, in 2010 Murdoch University enacted a new raft of academic misconduct regulations and procedures including guidelines, frameworks, training for academic staff and instructional units for students, and a wider range of print and online resources focused on academic integrity. The aim of these initiatives is to demonstrate that Murdoch University not only has robust and transparent regulations, but also ensures fair, consistent, and most importantly a developmental approach toward promoting academic integrity.