In 2019, our team at the University of Zurich (Roberto Andorno, Johannes Katsarov & Sandra Rossi) conducted a survey on the teaching of research integrity in Europe as part of the INTEGRITY project. Among others, we asked research integrity teachers what challenges they perceived to be greatest in their practice. The most frequently mentioned challenge was participants’ lack of interest in their courses: Thirty percent of our respondents suggested that they struggled with learners who questioned the relevance of their courses.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of the courses, where this problem occurred, were mandatory, i.e., learners did not join them voluntarily. Seventy-five percent of the surveyed research integrity courses were mandatory, in fact, and arguably, this is a good thing. It would be marvelous, if each and every student and researcher were so intrigued by the thought of learning more about a responsible conduct of research that everybody would join offered courses voluntarily.

However, not everyone is genuinely aware of the importance of research ethics. And those who are, are probably the people with the smallest need for relevant training. Essentially, the idea behind mandatory research integrity courses is to ensure that we sensitize all citizens, professionals, and researchers for the importance of a responsible conduct of research, and equip them with relevant knowledge, skills, and competences. This brings us back to the problem, which is a kind of vicious circle: How do we gain participants’ interest in research integrity courses, if they lack the intrinsic (i.e., personal) motivation to learn about this topic in the first place?

Obviously, this is a common problem in teaching mandatory courses, and the basic solution applies to any subject and any type of learner: As teachers, we need to enable learners to comprehend the personal value of what we are about to teach them. We need to demonstrate to them how knowledge, skills, and competences related to research integrity will help them in achieving their personal goals. Easier said than done.

A relatively common approach seems to be shocking learners with cases of extreme fraud or abuses of power in research, perhaps even by having them watch parts of documentaries. This is generally a good idea, as it increases the likelihood that learners acknowledge the importance of ethical and legal norms for the domain of research. Unfortunately, however, this strategy does not solve the basic problem. Learning about the general importance of research ethics is one thing – accepting that one ought to personally engage in a process of learning related to research integrity is quite another.

I think it is reasonable to assume that the main reason why people are not interested in research integrity training (if this is the case), is that they perceive themselves as ethically mature. In other words: Even if they believe that a responsible conduct of research is generally a good thing, they do not think of themselves as people in need of relevant training.

Psychological research has shown that most people think of themselves as more reasonable, intelligent, funny, and honest than the average (this is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect). Obviously, not everybody can be over-average, statistically speaking. However, people only tend to believe that they themselves are above average. So, as long as people do not exchange opinions about their competence, nobody’s conviction that they are among the best will be questioned. In fact, psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger found that the lower people’s ability to perform a task, the higher the chance that they will overestimate their competence – a finding that has been replicated in several domains.

In view of research integrity, this suggests that people with the least developed knowledge, skills, and competences will probably tend to see the least need for taking a course. The people not interested in a course may just have an overly optimistic opinion about their personal research integrity. If this is the problem, then an obvious solution will be to demonstrate to learners that problems related to research integrity are not as simple as they may think, and that there is a lot they need to learn.

Doing so, is probably easiest in working with actual researchers (including doctoral candidates). Three basic approaches are frequently used in ethics training across disciplines:

• Collecting personal cases: People with actual practice, e.g., in research, have usually come across situations that they found troubling. For instance, they may be unhappy about the way that authorship is handled in their team. People may have experienced these incidents personally, or they may have heard about them from peers. The value of collecting personal cases from course participants is that you engage them in thinking about problems that are personally meaningful to them. By collecting cases from an entire group and sharing them (in a protected space), course participants will also come across many other problems – some of which they may recognize, and others that may expand their horizon. Since these cases have all occurred to themselves or peers, they are very concrete and “close” to learners. Being able to deal with situations like these will easily become a strong motivation and promote active course participation.

• Experiential learning: Participants are challenged with a situation, in which they need to decide what to do. Depending on their decision, different consequences follow, which can be reflected individually and/or in the group. For example, Edward Melcer and colleagues have recently developed an interactive storytelling game called Academical. In one scenario, participants play a busy professor whose graduate student believes that a fellow researcher from the lab has been fabricating research results. Depending on selected dialogue options, the game turns into different directions, yielding different outcomes. Through simulations like this – which can also be conducted via role play, with written scenarios, etc. – learners can be sensitized to the intricacies of research ethics and recognize areas for personal improvement.

• Discussion of provocative cases: Collecting cases or having learners engage with simulations may not always be suitable. Collecting cases or having learners engage with simulations may not always be suitable. A simpler approach is that teachers present a case themselves, which promises to be highly relevant for their group of learners – meaning that it deals with problems that could realistically occur in their practice. For doctoral researchers, a “close” case should focus on the dilemma of a junior researcher, for instance, not on the troubling decisions of a national ethics committee.

Whatever method suits you best, the cases you confront learners with (including selected cases from the learners themselves) should be complicated enough to stimulate some disagreement among participants in terms of the nature of the ethical problem at hand, possible solutions, etc. Like in the previous approaches, the experience of difficulty in dealing with a meaningful problem ought to persuade learners of the course’s value. However, initial cases should not be too complex, either. If learners quickly get the feeling that they cannot “get it right”, they will begin to wonder why they should even try in the first place. To maintain motivation, you should sequence the activities of your course in such a way that learners will experience a sense of growing competence, which necessitates regular positive feedback on their achievements.

The three methods proposed above draw on researchers’ personal involvement in the practice of research to gain their interest in the subject. What about high-school and undergraduate students, though, who are not engaged in personal research projects?

This raises a second problem that may demotivate learners from engaging with research integrity. If I have no personal ambitions to become a researcher, why am I supposed to care about a topic like this? Why am I supposed to learn about correct citation, for instance, or plagiarism? Using the three approaches outlined above will probably not persuade high-school or undergraduate students to engage in your course if they lack a general interest in research. What can be done then?

In my opinion, the most fundamental question pertaining to these two groups is what they ought to know about the responsible conduct of research in the first place and why. Although this cannot be discussed in detail here, it seems clear that, today more than ever, both groups of students need to become more aware about the importance of scientific integrity. Science is under attack from various angles nowadays: On a daily basis, citizens are confronted with falsehoods and lies about products, services, health, and politics. At the most basic level, high-school students should be prepared to discriminate falsehoods from facts in diverse domains of life and to appreciate the value of scientific rigor in arriving at sound knowledge.

A helpful approach to gain high-school students’ interest in research ethics and critical thinking is to confront them with socioscientific issues that bear some personal relevance for them, e.g., research misconduct in the development of medicine, or discussions on “hot” topics like vaccination or the protection of the environment. This approach has been strongly promoted by Samantha Fowler, Dana Zeidler, and Troy Sadler, for instance.

Undergraduate studies’ main function is to prepare people for knowledge-based professions, i.e., practices that are so complex that the people who perform them need to draw on theory. Here again, the most basic demand that we can make is that professionals will be able to take a scientific approach in developing and working with knowledge from their discipline(s). They need to develop the ability to assess the goodness of theories for their practice critically. Moreover, since practitioners are frequently engaged in research and development projects in their diverse industries (e.g., as physicians, engineers, educators, or managers), they will also need to be able to support research projects in an ethical manner, e.g., in protecting the personal information of research participants.

Taking this into consideration, the discussion of provocative cases – or even the use of games and simulations, if available – reemerges as a distinct possibility to gain undergraduate students’ interest in research ethics. To make the cases or simulations meaningful for them, they ought to relate to the professions that they probably aspire to. For business students, scenarios related to market research may be relevant. Students of education may be inspired in discussing their potential role in experimenting with innovative teaching approaches in practice.

Additionally, undergraduate students will need to engage in personal research projects to appreciate the intricacies of research and knowledge creation. Writing research papers and theses as part of academic studies promotes diverse abilities that are of high value in any professional practice, e.g., a concern for logical consistency of one’s argumentation. An additional opportunity to bring up ethical issues related to research is on projects like these, e.g., pertaining to plagiarism and fairness in research cooperation.

In the INTEGRITY project, we are taking these kinds of considerations into account in the design of innovative course formats for different groups of learners, in the design of nudges, and in promoting a culture of research integrity. No matter how good the contents of a course are: If learners are not convinced that the course is valuable for them, they may ignore the learning opportunities that are offered to them. It is part of teachers’ role to guide learners to appreciate the value of learning about a responsible conduct of research.

Whatever you do to win course participants’ motivation, it is important that they feel respected. People of all ages like to form their opinions and attitudes autonomously. Telling students how to feel about something only leads to reactance, i.e., active, or passive opposition, as countless studies have demonstrated. For this reason, it is important that course participants discover reasons to be interested in research integrity themselves. For example, in a shared discussion about a difficult ethical dilemma in research.

On a final note, winning learners’ motivation is one thing – maintaining their motivation is another. A powerful method to maintain participants’ interest is to give them some say regarding the course, e.g., by letting them choose cases that they want to discuss, or by inviting them to suggest priority topics. By offering them a few smart choices, you can enhance learners’ motivation, ensure that they learn the things they are most interested in learning, and experience the course positively. A positive course experience, fueled by curiosity, a growing sense of competence, and a positive engagement with other people, is not just “nice to have”: Neurological studies have shown that learning needs to be associated with positive emotions for it to be relevant. Instead, put yourself “in the shoes” of your participants and try to create a course that you would have enjoyed yourself.