New Academic Integrity Officers

In line with the academic integrity communication in this same Staff Bulletin, changes to the Academic Integrity and Misconduct Policy and Academic Misconduct Procedures were recently approved and will be implemented from January 2022. These changes arose out of recommendations from the extensive 2020 Review into Academic Integrity at ACU.

A major change is the creation of an Academic Integrity Team (AIT) based in the Learning and Teaching Centre (LTC), which will take responsibility for case administration, analysis and reporting.

Associated with this is the creation of new assignments, that of Academic Integrity Officers (AIO), embedded within the schools/faculties (or equivalent). AIOs are academic staff members assigned by the Head of School (or equivalent), who have a leadership role in academic integrity matters within their organisational unit and are responsible for receiving allegations, determining evidence of academic misconduct, and applying penalties for academic misconduct. They will receive a specific workload allocation for this assignment and will be supported by the AIT. Depending on the size of the student cohort, there may be multiple AIOs across the school/faculty.

The AIOs are intended to be active academics with a teaching role, who are able to bring discipline specific skills and understanding to issues of academic integrity.

Specifically, under the new policy and procedures, the role involves:

• receiving allegations of potential misconduct from Lecturers in Charge (LICs) within their organisational unit
• investigating the allegations in full if an initial review of evidence suggests they have substance, including inviting a response from the student(s)
• making a determination, including any penalty and/or requirement for further education (where appropriate).

Under the new policy and procedures, the AIO would be able to make the final decision about most breaches, with only the most serious cases being referred to the next level (ie. cases involving bribery; contract cheating; or where the desired penalty cannot be applied by the AIO).

The AIO will also have a leading role in their organisational unit in matters of academic integrity, such as:

• being part of a community of practice of AIOs across their school, faculty and the university in sharing ideas, benchmarking penalties etc
• communicating new technologies or issues to their team
• feeding up new issues that arise to the AIT in LTC
• mentoring less experienced staff in matters associated with academic integrity.

If you have any queries, please contact academic.integrity@acu.edu.au.