Teaching staff concerns about academic integrity and their implications for staff development

Anecdotal evidence suggests that, even when academic staff are aware of the existence of a plagiarism policy, many still don't use it. They either prefer to deal with it in their own way, or ignore the issue. In order to encourage increased and improved use of the existing policy, we were interested in understanding staff concerns about plagiarism generally. As part of a Postgraduate Certificate (PG Cert) in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, a 3 hour workshop is devoted to Academic Integrity. At the start of the workshop, participants are asked to complete a survey on their experience and concerns regarding plagiarism, and their awareness of local policies and procedures. Staff are then asked to articulate their single biggest concern around academic integrity, and this collection of concerns and the ensuing discussion is used to direct aspects of the workshop. With different groups, the emerging group concerns will have different flavours; some teaching-focused, some student-focussed and some policy-focussed. The data from the surveys over the last 3 years gives an insight into staff awareness of policies and procedures at our institution as well as highlighting the general ethos and attitudes regarding student plagiarism. This paper will compare the collected data against early results from the IPPHEAE project staff survey. Knowledge about the levels of awareness of plagiarism policy amongst staff has implications for staff development. This paper will give an overview of various approaches to awareness raising and staff development that have been used in our institution, with an indication of the levels of success and factors contributing to this. Teaching staff concerns about academic integrity and their implications for staff development - ResearchGate. Available from: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/261529988_Teaching_staff_concerns_about_academic_integrity_and_their_implications_for_staff_development [accessed May 7, 2015].