Authors: Fiona Perry, Dr Anu Sharma, Associate Professor Michelle Cavaleri (Dean, Academic), Margaret Redestowicz, Education Centre Australia Higher Education.  

Focus area: Academic integrity education

Education Centre Australia’s Higher Education division (ECA HE) comprises the Asia Pacific International College (APIC), offering business, project management and IT programs; the College of Health Science (CHS), specialising in health management programs; and, the Higher Education Leadership Institute (HELI), delivering eLearning and research programs. While operating as separate institutions, these entities work closely together, leveraging shared staff, resources and knowledge.

Our student body is predominantly international, representing diverse cultural and educational backgrounds from the Indian subcontinent (India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh), Africa (Kenya, Ghana, Zimbabwe), South America (Brazil, Colombia, Argentina) and Asia-Pacific (Philippines, Indonesia, China, Fiji), alongside a smaller cohort of domestic students.

These diverse backgrounds can create academic challenges that require targeted support. International students often come from educational systems with different approaches to collaboration, citation and source usage, making it challenging for them to navigate the specific academic integrity expectations and research standards of our institution.

To better support students reported for academic integrity breaches, ECA HE implemented a proactive booking system that automatically offers individual support appointments with learning advisors. These appointments were offered in addition to the usual penalties such as redoing the academic integrity module, resubmitting work and other penalties in line with our Academic Integrity Policy and Procedure. These appointments aim to:

• gain a better understanding of student circumstances that contribute to academic integrity breaches
• provide personalised support addressing specific resubmission requirements and underlying causes to prevent future breaches
• share relevant implications with appropriate stakeholders including unit coordinators, course coordinators and learning designers.

Appointments typically take between 20 and 45 mins and students can pick a time and mode that suits them either online or face-to-face. To set up the appointments we created a new booking system that links to the academic integrity breach database to automate invitations to students who are reported. ECA HE developed training for staff on best practice for conducting appointments. This training covered record keeping, aims and goals of the sessions, tools and techniques that can be used and common challenges, with suggested strategies to overcome these. Furthermore, an example video of a consultation was created. The video is annotated to demonstrate effective strategies advisors can use.

Key lessons or points for implementation

1. Students reported for academic integrity breaches frequently require significant training in how to access library resources and websites, and navigate digital platforms such as academic support websites, the learning management system and Turnitin.  Academically, students need support building essential skills such as paraphrasing and referencing. Furthermore, students want guidance on the ethical use of generative artificial intelligence (gen AI).
2. In relation to wellbeing, students seek support for mental health concerns and assistance with managing health concerns. Students often present to appointments with challenges related to their socioeconomic and personal circumstances, including housing instability, employment pressures and financial difficulties, all of which can interfere with their ability to engage fully in their academic work. Advisors sometimes need to show students how to apply for special consideration and extensions. Staff need to be up to date on what supports are available and how to refer students.
3. Staff delivering individual consultations need training on how to best support students. This includes tailoring sessions to individuals and scaffolding and modelling the use of library and academic support resources. These staff also need to be equipped to deal with the multitude of wellbeing issues that can come up when working closely with individual students.

Author: Guy Curtis, University of Western Australia

Focus area: Academic integrity breach decision-making

For about 3 years I acted as the academic staff member within my School and was responsible for dealing with cases of alleged student academic misconduct. In my School there were large first-year psychology units that often had enrolments of around 1,000 students.  The first edition of the TEQSA Academic Integrity Toolkit included a guide to substantiating contract cheating, within which is “An investigator template for conducting a student academic integrity interview”. I decided to use this template for interviews with students who were reported by their first-year psychology unit coordinators for plagiarism.

Looking at text-matching software (for example, Turnitin), it was often the case that first-year students had either failed to indicate quoted text with quotation marks and page numbers or failed to provide name and date citations on paraphrased text. Two questions in the Toolkit’s interview guide were particularly helpful in working out whether students misunderstood referencing rules, misapplied referencing rules or understood referencing rules and chose not to follow them:

1. What referencing system/style did you use?
2. In the referencing system you used, are there any differences in how quotes and paraphrased material should be represented?

Students in first-year psychology would typically answer the first question with “APA style”. Their answer to the second question usually aligned with the errors in citations and referencing that were apparent in their assignment. For example, if a student had verbatim quotes without quotation marks, but with a name and date in brackets afterwards, they would usually say that the way to cite a quote is to put a name and year in brackets after it. This answer would reveal that they were trying to do the right thing, but didn’t understand that quotes had to be cited differently from paraphrased material. Similarly, students without citations on paraphrased materials might say that citations were only needed for quotes. First-year students’ answers to these structured questions often helped to foster educational conversations about citation rules and allowed me to direct them to relevant information about citation and writing.

In units of 1,000 students, some will miss, or misunderstand, information about academic integrity without any intention of plagiarising or gaining an unfair advantage by doing so. When such students end up being referred for investigation into alleged misconduct, it can undoubtedly be stressful for them. Confronting students with accusations, rather than asking questions that seek to understand how their assessments were written, may exacerbate such stresses. The benefit of good questions in identifying educational gaps means that perceived punitive processes can be turned into teachable moments. At the same time, recording within the university system that these conversations had taken place meant that, going forward, ignorance of the rules could not be used as an excuse by the same students for future instances of plagiarism.

Key lessons or points for implementation

• A structured approach for investigating allegations of academic misconduct is crucial.
• Using questions that allow investigators to seek information, rather than making allegations or assumptions leads to better outcomes.
• Plagiarism among first-year students is often a case of misunderstanding or misapplying rules. An allegation of plagiarism for first-year students can often be a chance to correct misunderstanding via one-on-one educational conversations.

Research shows that international students, particularly those whose first language is not English, need additional support when studying in Australia to learn and apply academic integrity rules and avoid academic misconduct. This brief guide contains tips and suggestions for creating academic integrity resources and awareness campaigns for international students. The guide also offers practical strategies and templates for developing effective academic integrity resources and awareness campaigns targeted at this group.

Key considerations for international student academic integrity campaigns

1. Use clear, simple English and provide translated versions in written formats.
2. Intervene early and repeatedly, make sure that messaging is delivered pre-enrolment, at enrolment, and subsequently.
3. Use multiple channels to meet students where they are, including orientation sessions, student accommodation, websites used by students, social media, on-campus locations such as international student offices/spaces, libraries, and other common areas.
4. Highlight available support to create engagement and assuage anxiety, normalise help-seeking.
5. Create a bespoke international student academic integrity information website for your institution.
6. Direct students to your international student academic integrity information website via a flyer/poster and/or online campaign.
7. Offer workshops and drop-in sessions on academic integrity for international students.

Example poster/flyer/website campaign

Use on-campus and/or online posters or flyers to catch students’ attention and direct them to bespoke international student academic integrity resources on your institution’s website. An annotated example is provided later in this guide.

Tips for posters

1. Use an attention-grabbing tagline/headline (see examples later) in a large bold font.
2. Translate the attention-grabbing headline into the most common languages spoken by students at your institution, making multiple versions if needed.
3. If using automatic translation tools, check the translation is correct by translating back to English, checking with a native speaker (staff or students), or checking with a language expert at your institution if your institution teaches languages other than English. Revise as necessary.
4. Link to further information on your institution’s website. For online campaigns use obvious clickable links or buttons, for paper-based posters or use a QR code for your link.

Example attention-grabbing

• Learn what cheating means in Australia
• In Australia, rules about cheating are strict, learn more
• Don’t get in trouble for cheating, learn the Australian rules
• Don’t get in trouble for cheating, learn the [INSERT INSTITUTION NAME] rules
• Learn what Australians mean by 'Academic Integrity'
• Know the rules: study smarter, not harder
• Avoid risky shortcuts: ask before you act
• Your success, your integrity: learn the rules today
• In Australia, “helping a friend” can sometimes be cheating, know the difference

Suggested content for international student academic integrity website

Generally speaking, most browsers will now translate website for users to their preferred languages. Because of this, unlike posters/flyers, it should not be necessary to translate an international-student academic-integrity webpage. However, it is worth checking the accuracy of any automatic translation with a bilingual staff member or student.

Why TEQSA collects data

TEQSA collects data on all higher education providers to help inform our risk-based approach to regulation. We use this information to minimise the reporting burden on providers associated with regulatory processes, such as a renewal of registration.

Data collection sources

We collect data on higher education providers’ operations from a variety of sources, including:

HELP IT System (HITS)

Tertiary Collection of Student Information (TCSI)

Quality Indications for Learning and Teaching (QILT)

Provider Information Request (PIR)

Providers who are not approved FEE-HELP providers report staff and student annually to TEQSA through TCSI. This is called the Provider Information Request (PIR).

The PIR is an information request under Section 28 of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011 (TEQSA Act).

Provider responsibilities

Providers should ensure their data is provided within required timeframes, is accurate and has been verified.
 

A condition of registration is that registered providers must give TEQSA an annual financial statement in the approved form, within 6 months after the end of the annual reporting period (Section 27 of TEQSA Act).
 

Failure to submit financial information within required timeframes is a breach of a condition of registration for which TEQSA may apply sanctions such as shortening the period of registration, cancelling registration (Section 98 of the TEQSA Act).
 

Providers should also ensure their contact details with TEQSA remain up to date.

Schedule

The deadline for submission dates for each data file is as follows:

Help and support

Scope and structure documents, element specifications and a range of support materials, including introductory training and frequently asked questions, are available on the TCSI website.

We encourage you to review the reporting requirement from TCSI website to ensure that submitted data is consistent with the required specifications. Please also read through the Data Verification website for comprehensive information and instructions that will assist you complete the student and staff verification process.

The TCSI Data Collections Team are the primary point of contact for the submission of data. Email: TCSIsupport@education.gov.au.

TEQSA’s Enquiries Management Team is also available to respond to administrative enquiries throughout the submission period. Email: providerenquiries@teqsa.gov.au.

If your institution has only recently registered as a higher education provider, we understand you may not be in a position to supply all of the required information. If this is case, please contact TEQSA’s Risk Team at risk@teqsa.gov.au.

TEQSA is committed to the safe and responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI). TEQSA acknowledges the opportunities AI offers to improve productivity and is committed to using AI in a manner that is accountable, transparent and maintains public confidence in our agency.

TEQSA’s approach to AI

When considering the use of AI TEQSA will ensure any use follows the requirements of the Digital Transformation Agency’s Policy for the responsible use of AI in government.

Why TEQSA is considering the adoption of AI

TEQSA is considering using AI to enhance its ability to efficiently protect student interests and uphold the reputation of Australia's higher education sector.

How we use and are considering using AI

TEQSA will only use AI where it has been assessed and found to be safe, ethical and effective. Any risks associated with the use of AI will be assessed and managed in accordance with TEQSA’s broader risk framework and whole-of-government policies. TEQSA currently uses the limited AI capabilities of Microsoft productivity tools.

TEQSA is considering using Microsoft Copilot analytics functionality for insights and workplace productivity. The domains TEQSA is considering the use of AI in are corporate and enabling, and compliance and fraud detection.

TEQSA is not considering the adoption of AI for decision-making purposes. TEQSA is not considering the use of AI in a manner where a member of the public or a higher education provider would directly interact with, or be significantly impacted by, AI or its outputs without human review.

How TEQSA will monitor the effectiveness of our AI use

TEQSA will monitor:

• our staff completion rates for mandatory AI training
• productivity impacts of AI use
• data and analytical insights generated by AI use
• the nature, circumstance and impacts of any AI incidents.

Based on the monitoring of AI effectiveness TEQSA will update its governance processes, guidance, policies and training to ensure AI use remains proportionate, safe and beneficial.

Governance

We have established governance processes and forums to assess and review the use of AI. These include the establishment of an AI Steering Group (AISG) and appointment of an Accountable Official and a Chief AI Officer to oversee how TEQSA implements and uses AI. The functions of the AISG include:

• promoting safe and responsible use of AI
• overseeing the development of TEQSA’s AI policies and processes
• setting-up and overseeing AI initiatives and pilots
• developing pathways for staff, service providers and other stakeholders to report AI use concerns or incidents
• overseeing development and implementation of mandatory AI capability training for all staff.

Compliance

TEQSA will only use AI when doing so is in accordance with applicable legislation, frameworks, policies and best practice.  Any AI initiatives will align with the APS values, and TEQSA delivery of public value.

Who to contact about TEQSA’s statement

For any questions regarding this statement, or for more information about how TEQSA uses AI, please email enquiries@teqsa.gov.au.

Consultation on TEQSA’s Regulatory Risk Framework

Consultation on TEQSA’s Regulatory Risk Framework was launched on 19 March 2026. 
 

• Further details