One of the most important lessons from the research on student integrity is that many students struggle to understand what is required of them; some do not know the basic rules, some do not understand what a concept such as ‘plagiarizing’ entails (and then it makes little sense to ask them not to plagiarize) and many are ill-equipped to handle grey-zone dilemmas.

One of the major goals of the INTEGRITY project is to develop teaching tools that empower students and give them the skills they need to tackle the wide range academic integrity issues they face in real life.

One of these new teaching tools is Integrity Games aimed at undergraduate university students across the faculties. It was recently released and is freely available online in English, French, Hungarian and Danish (https://integgame.eu).

The tool is designed using a narrative learning paradigm where the user can explore central integrity related issues by playing through realistic cases. In each case, the user is confronted with a series of dilemmas that unfolds depending on the choices made by the user. In Integrity Games choices have consequences and acting with integrity does not always come for free.

So far, four different cases are available: one on plagiarism, one on collaboration and two on collection and analysis of data. The cases are based on the research performed in the INTEGRITY project on what integrity dilemmas, students commonly face. In combination with the build-in library of central concepts, they are designed to give the user basic knowledge on rules and requirements, but also to put students in situations where the rules may not apply in a clear way. This invites reflection and discussion among users and gives them some of the tools needed to handle not only cases of clear-cut misconduct, but also tricky cases, where students are most often in doubt: How do you handle free-riders in group projects? Is it ok to get help from friends or family on assignments? What is the correct way to paraphrase a text book in your own work?

Integrity Games is designed as a highly flexible tool to be used in a wide range of teaching situations. Students can either use the tool at home as part of their individual preparation or they can play through the cases in groups during class. Each individual dilemma can also be accessed directly without the narrative structure and used for shorter in-class discussions or a welcome break in a lecture. More suggestions on how to use the tool can be found in the teacher manual: https://integgame.eu/forTeachers. Here, you can also find a guided video introduction to the tool.

As part of the research-based design of the tool, Integrity Games was pilot tested on Danish, Hungarian and Swiss students in the spring 2021, and further tested during European Student Convention hosted by the INTEGRITY project in the autumn 2021. Results from these tests suggest that the tool succeeds in its main goals of sparking interest and promoting learning of core academic issues. Results of a systematic control/effect group test that was performed on the final version of the tool are still under publication. If the positive results from the pilot tests are confirmed, we will have a new teaching tool that may assist the effort to promote academic integrity and inspire new and innovative ways of teaching the subject.