BUSM1094: Your client is the Academic Director of a large university campus located in Australia: Organisations Analysis Assignment, RMIT, Singapore

YOUR CONSULTANCY BRIEF

Your client is the Academic Director of a large university campus located in Australia. Both domestic and international students study at this campus. Amongst her many responsibilities, the Academic Director is responsible for:

1) ensuring that students acquire the skills and knowledge to transform the world around them:

2) promoting student engagement:

3) inspiring students to continue their educational journey with post-graduate studies and research: and

4) maintaining academic integrity. These four pillars of education are inextricably connected. The Academic Director has engaged your consultancy firm to attend to one educational pillar.

in particular: she has hired you to review the university’s academic integrity processes.

A number of matters have led to the need to review the university’s academic integrity processes:

. A small but significant number of students appear to be disengaged from their studies: they do not attend class and they do not engage with course materials. Yet, they submit completed assessments.

A small but significant number of students engage in academic misconduct. involving matters such as: o Student participation in a misconduct marketplace, whereby students knowingly facilitate misconduct by posting their completed assignments online (for a fee, or to access other students’ completed assignments) or sharing their assignments with other students. Students who download these assignments then copy and make minor alterations to this work to beat the Turn It In plagiarism checker. and misleadingly submit this work as their own.

• Paying a third party to produce an assignment on their behalf. . This misconduct is concerning because: o Students who engage in misconduct place themselves in a potentially compromising situation, especially if they engage a third party to produce their assignment. Stories have been emerging of students being blackmailed by these third parties, down the track.

• It means that some students are not achieving the learning outcomes of their courses and degrees. Some of these students are graduating, yet do not possess the skills and knowledge implied by their degree. Ultimately, employer confidence in the business degrees issued by the university is being eroded. and the value of the degree diminished.

This unfairly impacts the vast majority of students who graduate on their own merits. o There are also associated opportunity costs: Students who do not embrace the educational opportunities available through the university system do not achieve their full potential: they shortchange themselves, and society.

. Academic staff spend too much time pursuing misconduct cases, when they might be investing their time in enriching their courses to optimise students’ experience and learning, conducting research that transforms business practices, and nurturing students so that they achieve their potential.

In briefing you about this problem, the Academic Director emphasises the following:

. Most students understand the importance of academic integrity and are keen to see this upheld. They wish to work in partnership with the University to address this issue. . The Academic Director is keen to understand the root cause of this problem, and believes this to be multifaceted.

She believes both the university and the student body have responsibilities in improving and maintaining academic integrity. and protecting students from unscrupulous “tutoring” providers. . The Academic Director believes the university must develop and deploy strategies that make education and academic integrity meaningful to students.

Students also have responsibilities to uphold academic integrity. . The Academic Director flags a potential gap between the university’s and students’ perceptions of education. Some students approach their studies in a transactional manner: they wish to obtain a qualification. Academics within the university system believe that education can provide students with transformative possibilities.

The Academic Director believes that awakening students to the possibilities of education is crucial to solving academic integrity issues. . The Academic Director believes in the singular potential of every student enrolled in the university.

She believes her university can play a vital role in awakening students to their capacity to learn, and their agency – that is. their ability to take what they learn at the university and use it to make their mark on the world. The Academic Director does not see students as “consumers” or “customers”. She sees them as students. and the role of academics as true educators.