03/31/2025

Saints and Scholars….and everything in-between: Our experience of establishing an Academic Integrity Unit in an Irish University

by Mary-Claire Kennedy, Silvia Benini, Fionn McGrath and Reena Cole

Image credit: Author using Microsoft Copilot

Ireland is fondly known as ‘the land of Saints and Scholars’. We are enormously proud of our many wonderful poets and thinkers, Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney to name a few. So far so virtuous! Unfortunately, some of our aspiring academic scholars are not always so saintly. Accordingly, academic integrity policies and procedures for managing academic misconduct are as core to Irish tertiary education settings as they are to academic institutions globally. In this piece, we reflect on the process of establishing an academic integrity unit within the context of the Irish university sector through some inspiring Gaelic proverbs.

‘Tús maith leath na hoibre’ (Gaelic Proverb: A good start is half the work)

The Academic Integrity Unit at the University of Limerick (UL), was established in September 2023 within the Office of the Provost and Deputy President. The team is composed of three staff members, an Academic Integrity Lead and two educational developers. UL is a midsize institution in the west of Ireland, with approximately 18,000 students and 2,000 staff. The establishment of a discrete team dedicated solely to academic integrity at the heart of University’s structures has been vital in gaining visibility and credibility amongst colleagues.

Ireland is fortunate to have the National Academic Integrity Network (NAIN). The network, which represents a wide variety of higher education stakeholders, has published an excellent series of non-statutory guidelines relating to academic integrity and procedures for managing academic misconduct. A key priority for our team was effectively leveraging this national guidance to shape our own policy and procedures. NAIN’s substantial body of literature on best practices for policy development and implementation provides a useful foundation. However, the devil is in the detail. It became apparent during our policy development process that due to our University’s specific and local context, national guidelines would need to be tailored to meet the needs and expectations of our particular campus community.

This process was complicated as we were a new team and new faces to the University. It became evident that both time and space would be required to build positive relationships with both staff and students, listening to their thoughts and seeking to understand their concerns about our existing academic integrity processes. We felt that this meaningful and genuine engagement with staff and students was the cornerstone of the successful development of our policy. Engaging stakeholders in a partnership of equals, seeking feedback, being open to change and pragmatic decision-making have been essential ingredients for our success.

Over and above our policy development, we have also taken some tentative first steps to face the GenAI storm head on. In 2024, our Academic Council approved our ‘UL Principles for GenAI for Staff, Researchers and Students’. These have provided a positive framing for thinking about GenAI in the context of all activities on campus. This represents a fruitful shift away from the positives vs negatives (cost-benefit) discussion which can dominate this topic. We have also tried other novel strategies to reach our stakeholders such as our ‘Give me about 10 minutes on’ podcast which explores issues relating to academic integrity in a conversational and light-hearted manner.

‘Níl bua gan dua’ (Gaelic Proverb: There's no victory without hardship)

Alas, there have been many days where we doubted our direction as a team and questioned whether our work was reaching the ‘right people’ and whether we were ‘on the right track’. An uncomfortable truth we have come to accept is that there is no silver bullet to the GenAI conundrum. Radical educational transformation, redesign of assessment and even a fundamental revisiting of educational philosophy is perhaps the only way to proceed. Our team, in collaboration with the Centre for Transformative Learning, offer assessment redesign workshops which place academic integrity and the principles of Universal Design for Learning at the core of redesign discussions. There are, of course, many wonderful academic integrity scholars who have sought to provide robust frameworks and strategies to help us tackle the GenAI puzzle, including Perkins, Furze and colleagues’ AI Assessment Scale which we make extensive reference to in our educational materials (Perkins et al., 2024). However, these do not provide a single, neat solution. GenAI is here to stay, and the very essence of higher education, including assessment, must be reconsidered, especially from the perspective of integrity. Although challenging, we now recognise the importance of acknowledging the fears and frustrations of our academic colleagues. It is only upon recognising these sometimes overwhelming emotions that we can move onto a positive and pragmatic discussion about the path forward.

‘Ar Scáth a Chéile a Mhaireann na Daoine’ (Gaelic Proverb: Under the Shelter of Each Other, People Survive)

The pace of work for our small team has been frantic at times over the past year. Every few months, we clear space in our busy schedules to meet in a sunny room in our stunning library to stop and smell the roses (metaphorically and literally). During these moments of tranquillity, we have identified some aspects of our work that could be further enhanced. Such was the urgency we felt to develop information and support resources for students, we did not meaningfully engage students enough to co-create these materials. As they are the most important stakeholder in the University, this was remiss, and we now have plans to review and co-create content with members of the student community over the summer. Empowering students to fundamentally shape the information and support we provide will not only improve the quality of the resources but perhaps enhance acceptability amongst students. From our own viewpoint, the informal networks we have established through the NAIN family have been our compass and comfort over the past year. Sharing our successes and disappointments with our counterparts from other Irish universities has been a buoy in sometimes stormy waters. This is the very essence of the proverb ‘Under the shelter of each other, people survive’.

Figure 1: University of Limerick GenAI Principles for Staff, Researchers and Students

References

Perkins, M., Furze, L., Roe, J., and MacVaugh, J. (2024). The Artificial Intelligence Assessment Scale (AIAS): A Framework for Ethical Integration of Generative AI in Educational Assessment. Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 21(06) https://doi.org/10.53761/q3azde36

Dr Mary-Claire Kennedy, is Head of the Academic Integrity Unit at the University of Limerick. She is a registered pharmacist and has experience in clinical, regulatory and academic settings.

Dr Silvia Benini works as Educational Developer in the Academic Integrity Unit at the University of Limerick. She has worked as lecturer in Education and Technology and Modern Languages, and she has been involved in various national and international research projects.

Dr Fionn McGrath is an Educational Developer in the Academic Integrity Unit at the University of Limerick. He is a philosopher who specialises in normative questions arising from technological change within organisations, especially Universities.

Dr Reena Cole is the Associate Vice President Academic Affairs at the University of Limerick. She is a Chartered Engineer and a lecturer in Mechanical Engineering, and past Assistant Dean Academic Affairs for the UL Faculty of Science and Engineering.

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