An auto-ethnographic approach to academic integrity: experiences through the lens as a student, design teacher and academic integrity officer

This research aimed to share a personal voice, through a reflexive narrative process, of how the author’s experiences as a student, design teacher and academic integrity officer influenced the conceiving and implementation of a student designed university academic integrity campaign. An auto-ethnographic methodology was utilized to share stories, expressing thoughts, feelings, and attitudes, as new knowledge for other universities seeking to engage in academic integrity initiatives. Self-reflective journaling provided key words and phrases that were identified as data and then coded using three Saldaña coding methods (Emotion, In Vivo and Initial). Three key themes emerged: empathy, education, and positive change. It is evident in the key findings that these three themes play a vital role for academic integrity awareness in enabling student engagement, deep learning, redirection of student mindsets, and second chances. These reflections shared a process for fostering behavioural change at student and university levels through academic integrity promotion. This campaign and exhibition were heralded as an example to follow for universities by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) of Australia.