Authors: Associate Professor Christine Slade and Dr James Lewandowski-Cox, The University of Queensland

Focus area: Academic integrity breach decision-making

Unethical academic file sharing continues to pose serious risks to both academic integrity and copyright compliance, particularly as platforms incentivise students to upload institutional content (Seeland et al., 2022; Rogerson & Basanta, 2016). Large-scale implementation of copyright takedown procedures remains a significant challenge for institutions (Seeland et al., 2022).

The Academic Student File Sharing (ASFS) pilot (the Pilot) at UQ, evaluated the effectiveness of copyright takedown notices to address academic integrity issues arising from student file sharing on platforms such as CourseHero and StuDocu. These platforms hosted over 75,000 files tagged as UQ content, often uploaded by students in exchange for incentives like premium access or cash rewards. The Pilot aimed to remove 5% of UQ files from each site – 3,277 from CourseHero and 497 from StuDocu. It exceeded these targets, successfully removing 3,486 from CourseHero (5.32%) and 703 files from StuDocu (7.07%) using 169.75 hours of staff time. All removed files remained offline as of July 2023, demonstrating the viability of copyright enforcement as a sustainable strategy.

Files with clear UQ branding or staff email addresses were removed more easily, while non-branded materials required additional provenance. CourseHero’s ‘PinPoint’ tool enabled efficient bulk takedowns, whereas StudDoc’s form required individual submissions. To meet targets, UQ deployed ‘working bees’ with trained library staff to manage the process.

Upload filter testing revealed that CourseHero blocked files containing the phrase ‘This content is protected and may not be shared, uploaded or distributed’, while StuDocu’s filters focused more on content quality than copyright. Both platforms incentivised uploads, with StuDocu offering direct cash payments, raising concerns about breaches of UQ’s Student Code of Conduct.

This pilot offers a practical and replicable model for institutions facing similar challenges. Its tools, strategies and insights are transferable, helping universities protect intellectual property (IP) and uphold academic integrity. While effective, ongoing success depends on institutional commitment, consistent branding practices and sector-wide collaboration.

Key lessons or points for implementation

• Develop a communications package to inform academic staff about file sharing risks and allocate staff resources to maintain takedown efforts.
• Use consistent branding and embed CourseHero’s copyright phrase in teaching materials.
• Consider misconduct action for students who upload institutional intellectual property for gain.

References

• Rogerson, A.M., & Basanta, G. (2016). Peer-to-peer file sharing and academic integrity in the internet age.  In T. Bretag (Ed.), Handbook of Academic Integrity, (pp.273-285). Springer Reference. DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-098-8_55
• Seeland, J., Eaton, S.E., & Stoesz, B.M. (2022). Leveraging College Copyright Ownership Against File-Sharing and Contract Cheating Websites. In S.E. Eaton et al. (Eds.), Contract Cheating in Higher Education, (pp. 61-76). Palgrave Macmillan.  doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12680-2_5 
   

Author: Dr Katherine Sugars, Murdoch University

Focus area: Partnering with students

Academic misconduct is a wicked problem; we need a cornucopia of strategies. I find building a sense of belonging can reduce ad hoc misconduct risks and has a positive effect on student commitment to academic integrity — individually and as a social group norm. Designing a learning space around belonging has multiple other benefits. It:

• helps students engage and dive into novel learning experiences
• strengthens relationships and trust
• enhances individual wellbeing.

The more my students teach me about their worldview, the more I can make sense of their experiences and actions. I can then be more purposeful in my unit design and teaching and improve outcomes. I am not the only one who finds that increased agency in a more predictable learning space inspires commitment to learning and group wellbeing. In the context of academic integrity, this can mean to do what is right and fair for everyone, and cooperate with group rules, until they become second nature: Just what we do here.

I teach an academic skills unit for international master’s students, typically those who have newly arrived in Australia. Most of my students are Bhutanese with an eclectic mix of other nationalities; differences matter, as do common woes. The challenge is to build a shared identity and a classroom experience that is flexible and engaging but includes non-negotiables — in this case academic integrity. Students must adapt, but I can too (within policy constraints). I can build bridges, move boundaries, re-order priorities, be responsive to shifting needs of cohorts and individuals, and I can see myself as one of “us” while we journey together.

Coming to Australia to earn a degree is a big transition. It is not just logistics, culture shock or even homesickness — it is social standing and security in their understanding of the world and their place in it. Former professionals work as Uber drivers, cleaners or in aged care and struggle to pay rent. Expectations and reality are far apart. The rules seem to make life harder and more confusing. It takes time to regain stability, self-confidence and belongingness, and this comes from finding agency, choosing our own actions and learning what to expect in response.

How can this understanding influence unit design and class activities?

First, I design for and teach whole human beings, who are courageous and capable, and who are dealing with a lot of stuff right now. Be kind and empathetic, actively affirm this shared experience. I use their life experience as a topic for class activities and assessments. I resist saying everyone is in the same boat, even though it is true, because this diminishes their experience and is disempowering, a conversation stopper (as are judging and fixing). I try not to think “they made their choice” even when I am mad at them, because this happened in the past and can’t be fixed. It is useful for judging but not problem solving (same with “should” and “should have”).

I provide all the stability and predictability I possibly can. Help them build a connected support structure, in class, on the learning management system (LMS), within the university and with classmates, friends and family. Stabilise their learning environment. Not in a rigid way, but rather a routinely engaging, welcoming, easy-to-participate and fun way. Remove unnecessary barriers and make acting the way you hope the easiest and most rewarded choice. Attendance is the first step in relationship building and, oh yes... learning. I see myself as a key support person. The more students sense I care for them, the more they commit to genuine engagement in my unit. I try to make it easy to get it right.

Global grand challenges and real-life experiences make great topics for practicing academic skills. There is no right (or wrong) answer and they offer something for everyone to engage with. When giving feedback on weekly journal writing I will often engage with the substance of a student's entry as well as the scholarship. I recall meeting with a student who I had given 5 fails in a row to. I was repeating my mantra, “I want to hear your voice”, and he suddenly looked at me in wonder and said “you really care about what I have to say.” It was a moment. He submitted some brilliant persuasive writing after that. Plus, we were both much happier. The fails weren’t because he couldn’t, or was lazy or entitled, they were because he did not value the activity enough and part of that was because he thought I didn’t value him.

I have had to rethink my priorities. I value genuine voice over polished grammar and spelling (it can be hard to convince students this is true and that it will be reflected in their marks). I value integrity far more than due dates. I recall brainstorming in class “what to do when there is 2 hours until your assignment is due and you haven’t started”. We filled a whole whiteboard (including use ChatGPT, copy from a friend and outsource) and I still needed to be the one to suggest “ask for an extension.” 
Bhutanese students have a deep respect for their elders and their teachers, and this can create strange situations where they employ a work-around when I expect them to ask directly. I try to predict when this might happen, with my crystal ball, and be explicit (repeatedly) that questioning is allowed, nay, rewarded and rewarding! I even model being wrong. It may be painful but it's good for my soul. In fact, it is hard to critically engage at all unless you allow yourself to question others and welcome questions without defensiveness.

I encourage even the smallest risk-taking when it comes to learning. I read in a student portfolio that her tutor simply saying her comment in class was excellent changed her whole outlook: her confidence, her commitment to the work and her joy in challenging herself. The risk-taking doesn’t have to be content-related. My Bhutanese students have a wicked sense of humour and are — a surprise at first — fiercely competitive. We play games. Not all students find ‘Fruit salad’ fun, so I’m told in feedback, but laughter and movement change everything. A student might be too anxious to contribute an idea to a group discussion but happy to hip-check me over the last free chair — a step in the right direction, I say. For some students who remain quiet in class, we may dialogue privately via their weekly portfolios - their creations, my responses. Building trust and allowing a safe learning space to conquer anxiety about being judged by others. Silently can be an equally valuable way to conduct an interpersonal learning and teaching relationship.

I make every effort to reduce risk and tragic consequences of mistakes, while establishing a clear cause and effect expectation for misconduct. Early, low-stakes, formative assessment (and best four of five fortnightly submissions) allows for early zeros. I find a zero is remarkably effective individual feedback and normative boundary setting. High-stakes assessments are high security. This minimises my own uncertainty and errors, and lowers the risk of unit failure from one mistake.

I try to be explicit with students about what I expect when it comes to academic integrity —the principle is easy, the details are harder. It is a fuzzy line, because I want them to develop their own good judgement about the use of generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) and collaborating with group members. Both can be valuable, both can enhance learning. Errors in judgement can be teaching moments. But deliberately misrepresenting authorship draws a penalty, as does carelessly misrepresenting authorship with the attitude that it does not really matter. I aim to pick it up every time. I’m delusional, I know (I’d love to know my actual hit and miss ratio).

Creating a fun, safe learning space that belongs to everyone helps each student take social and cognitive risks. When I ask students what tempts them to cheat, they say time pressure, not understanding requirements, thinking they will get a better mark and life being overwhelming. I can lessen some of these drivers with technical fixes, but student feedback consistently and overwhelmingly says that knowing their contribution to the group is valued and being supported as a human being, is what they value most. Students report being motivated by this sense of inclusion and mutual regard to have self-confidence and maintain integrity when hurdles appear.

Key lessons or points for implementation

• Reduce disorientation by providing stability and a shared group identity, have fun together, establish academic integrity as a group norm.
• Reassess priorities, be clear and strong on what matters.
• Encourage learning risks, make it safe, make it personal. Make it the best and most enjoyable option for the student to do the work themselves.
• Back-up plan: Stick to your word and penalise academic misconduct.

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.

This section of the toolkit explores assessment security and the risks associated with different forms of assessment. The section includes frameworks for academic integrity and assessment security, and showcases different ways of securing assessment to provide assurance that they are completed with integrity.