09/21/2023

Membership in ICAI Matters

Written by Jennie Miron

Fall semester is underway for many of us as we welcome new students and already enrolled students to our learning settings. New semesters bring plenty of reasons to be excited and positive in our roles as educators, leaders, and researchers in academia. We would be remiss, however, to downplay the effects that we continue to experience post-pandemic across our learning environments and within our approaches to teaching-learning. Just as we began to share a collective deep breath and settled into new ways of engaging our students we were met with a second challenge, the unprecedented global rise of artificial intelligence applications. Free access to some of the different applications has allowed students to easily adopt them into their daily academic work, sometimes with little appreciation for the consequences to their learning or the ethical threats they pose.

The concerns for the quality of student learning through both the pandemic and the upsurge of artificial intelligence have created opportunities for conversations related to academic integrity. Of course, nurturing synergies between different professional disciplines and services within our organizations remains key to the success and promotion of shared cultures of academic integrity and helps ensure that we are working together in ways that are positive and meaningful. The focus must always remain on student learning, and academic research that contributes to positive change for humankind. Strengthening cultures of academic integrity is also important in supporting the development of ethically sound and career-ready graduates. While these combined efforts are essential, it is also important to appreciate the positive effects that a collective of like-minded individuals can have when they are organized, working, and collaborating synchronously across a global stage. The work of supporting the curation and development of academic cultures that cherish and protect integrity cannot be underestimated.

The International Center for Academic Integrity is a volunteer organization and has worked tirelessly to promote the importance of academic integrity and academic integrity efforts in education around the world. Founded in 1992 by Dr. Don McCabe, it has continued to push academic integrity conversations forward through its efforts, assessment services, and resources. Annual ICAI conferences provide opportunities for learning between international academics, collaborative work (recent updates to the McCabe Faculty Survey), and networking to strengthen our efforts on a global stage (International Day of Action). As an organization, we work with current challenges to academic integrity and the evolving needs of our membership. ICAI, through the work and collaboration of volunteers, offers an additional link to support those in organizations working to understand and advance academic integrity as a culture for learning. The strength of ICAI is through its membership.

We are currently working to increase our membership so that we continue our work and support academic integrity efforts. There are many benefits to membership that are extended to faculty, administrators, students, and staff including reduced costs to attend annual conferences, access to important documents, monthly newsletters, and access to expert consultants. For more detailed information on the benefits please visit Member Benefits. Note that members can join as individuals or as an organization.

If you are reading this blog and do not have a membership please consider joining us. You can learn more about how to join as an individual member here Individual Membership  OR as an organization here Organizational Membership.

If you are reading this, and already have a membership we thank you and are calling upon you to encourage others to join ICAI and support our continued efforts.

We believe the ICAI is only as strong as its membership. Helen Keller said, “alone we can do so little; together we can do so much” (Team Bonding, 2014, para 1). These words have never been truer. If you have any questions about this blog entry or membership please feel free to reach out to Jennie Miron (Chair of the Membership Committee) at  jmiron@academicintegrity.org.

Reference

Team Bonding. (2014, February 10). The power of communication. https://www.teambonding.com/power-of-communication/ 

Thank you for being a member of ICAI. Not a member of ICAI yet? Check out the benefits of membership and consider joining us by visiting our membership page. Be part of something great!