Engaging midwifery students in academic integrity through a multi-faceted, integrated approach

As part of an Australian Government funded Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT) project, a Midwifery Program Manager and an Academic Language and Learning (ALL) adviser worked together to integrate academic integrity into the discipline content in a first year subject in the Graduate Diploma of Midwifery. The Program Manager and ALL adviser shared responsibility for developing and assessing academic integrity activities. The activities formed a scaffolded approach, beginning with a workshop to explicitly engage students with the concepts, followed by an assignment where students could test out their knowledge of paraphrasing, in-text referencing and synthesising from refereed journals in their discipline. Both summative and substantial formative feedback was provided, designed to assist students in identifying what they did well and any issues that needed to be addressed before they engaged with their literature review assignment. The rubric for the literature review was changed to give greater emphasis to academic integrity. Results showed that students developed a deep understanding of how to achieve academic integrity, and focus group feedback on the activities was positive. We argue that this multi-faceted, scaffolded, integrated approach is the most effective way to engage students in academic literacy skills such as academic integrity.