Addressing academic integrity through a students-as-partners initiative

The Students as Partners (SaP) initiative at Central Queensland University's School of Business and Law aims to reduce academic integrity breaches by involving students in the development and implementation of prevention strategies. The focus is on combating contract cheating and other forms of academic dishonesty. The initiative involves a collaborative partnership between students and faculty/academic staff, with students participating outside of their regular degree program. The SaP initiative operates by actively involving students in identifying the root causes of academic misconduct and developing tailored interventions, including awareness campaigns, educational materials, and integrity-related workshops. The partnership process is guided by principles of mutual respect, collaboration, transparency, and shared responsibility. The initiative has led to a significant reduction in academic misconduct cases, with a 95.46% decrease in breaches in the most prevalent unit of study. Examining school-level distributions of academic misconduct cases provides valuable insights into the prevalence and distribution of breaches across different academic units within the university. The percentage of misconduct cases within the School of Business and Law exhibited fluctuating trends over the study period. Notably, a peak of 36% was recorded in 2018, followed by a decline in subsequent years, with percentages reaching 20% in 2022 and 10% in 2023. These variations suggest dynamic patterns in academic misconduct within business and law. This case study demonstrates that involving students as partners can effectively address academic integrity issues, and other educational institutions can adopt a similar approach to promote a culture of integrity and reduce academic misconduct.