05/19/2025

Summer Series Pre-Blog 1. Building Momentum

by Amanda McKenzie and Ainsley Rouse

The Summer Series of webinars is doing a blog takeover! Here is the first pre-webinar blog where the presenters for Workshop 1. Building Momentum on May 30 will discuss some key, thought-provoking questions to prepare for the session.

1. What do you find most exciting/ challenging/ interesting about building momentum within academic integrity work? Has your answer shifted over the years? If so, how? If not, why not?

AMANDA: For me, the most interesting and challenging part is seeing people connect the dots. Academic integrity is threaded throughout a student's school experience and few people working on campus realize the interconnectedness. This is a longstanding issue which has been slow to change. If a student is suffering in their personal life - their academics are likely to suffer too, and they are at increased risk to commit an academic offence. I get energized seeing others on campus rally to be part of a holistic approach to student success. It’s like they can finally see the whole picture.

AINSLEY: I echo what Amanda shared about interconnectedness: both in terms of the varied factors that might impact a given case, and in terms of the connections that exist or that can be strengthened within one’s institution. On the institutional level, we want to make support for academic integrity part of what it means to teach and learn at our institution. Making that connection, and making it matter to others, is both exciting and challenging.

Another interesting part of building momentum is the expansiveness of the topic of academic integrity. Academic integrity is so central to what it means to teach and to learn and yet the sprawling nature can be daunting. It is exciting to think about this sprawl more in terms of the tentacular nature of the topic within an institution and within higher education. As Amanda noted, it is threaded into a student’s experience and woven into the very fabric of higher education. Over the last years there has been a lot of change in terms of the types of activities and conversations that academic integrity is connected to – that fact is both exciting but also challenging. 

2. What do you think folks new(er) to building momentum within academic integrity work might have misconceptions about/ most need or want to know?

AMANDA: Building momentum occurs in many tiny steps in all parts of the campus. I think sometimes people focus too hard on building themselves up without thinking of how they can leverage their work with others. Strength in numbers!!! Find your allies and champions to help grow the importance of academic integrity together.

AINSLEY: It is definitely a team effort. Like on any team, across an institution different partners will have different motivations, incentives and contexts that impact if and how they get involved and what aspects will be most important to them. Flexibility is essential in terms of finding overarching goals and principles that everyone on the broader team is on board with. Setting up structures to promote higher-level unifying principles and shared motivations is important. Balancing strategy with a service-oriented approach (supporting, connecting, facilitating) has been a valuable lesson.

3. What are you most hoping folks will come to your webinar session prepared to talk about?

AMANDA: Participants should be thinking about their next step. They should reflect on where their campus is at and where it needs to go. I hope they’ll feel energized by our examples and be able to apply them in their own situation. 

AINSLEY: Scenarios and challenges they are encountering at their own institutions. There is no perfect approach but a firm understanding of one’s own institution and needs is essential, including strengths and weaknesses.

Hopefully those attending have had a chance to read McKenzie and Bertram Gallant’s ICAI blog posts (links below), emphasizing the importance of the centralized approaches and discussing “essential elements” to grow academic integrity support in their institutions. Other recommended pre-reads for this session include Ellis and Murdoch's discussion around the operationalisation of "challenging cheating" and moving from the why to the how (Ellis and Murdoch, 2024).  Their structural framework – the Educational Integrity Enforcement Pyramid – provides a useful tool to get participants thinking about different student attitudes towards learning, various institutional responses, and the interplay between them.

4. What are you most hoping folks will take away from your webinar session? Why?

AMANDA: Inspiration to build a culture of integrity in their own landscape – whatever that looks like. Everyone’s will be different!

AINSLEY: Seeing examples and experiences from an established office and from a newer Hub. Seeing different approaches to academic integrity support in terms of degrees of centralization, as well as the types of services offered.

Get ready for Workshop 1: Building Momentum (Friday 30 May 12pm EST)

Academic Integrity is foundational in education, yet few institutions dedicate enough attention or resources to it. Join us to discuss building a mission and developing momentum to support and grow academic integrity on your campus. 

Pre-readings for Workshop #1:

Bertram Gallant (2022), When a Thousand Flowers Bloom

McKenzie (2024), #Makeitsomeonesjob 

Recommended further readings: 

Bertram Gallant & Drinan (2008), Toward a Model of Academic Integrity Institutionalization 

Ellis & Murdoch (2024), The educational integrity enforcement pyramid 

Register here

Amanda McKenzie oversees the Office of Academic Integrity at the University of Waterloo. She was one of the co-founders of ICAI Canadian Regional Consortium (ICAI Canada), and an Officer and Board Member of the International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI). 

Ainsley Rouse is the Associate Director, Academic Integrity at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver where she leads the Academic Integrity Hub in the Provost's Office. She is the Provincial Advisor for BC for ICAI's Canadian National Consortium.

The authors' views are their own.

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