Ethical Digital Higher Education Leadership
A report by Professor Richard Watermeyer, Dr Danielle Guizzo and Lara Dzabolova. Commissioned by the N-TUTORR National Digital Leadership Network
Abstract
The horizon-scanning report will provide a critical analysis of extant knowledge related to academic integrity as a commitment to six underpinning values of honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility and courage (ICAI, 2021), guiding ethical behaviour across the tripartite domains of teaching, research and administration, and as impacted by rapidly evolving digital technologies, especially artificial intelligence (AI) tools. It will provide recommendations for university leaders navigating institutional best practice and policy for academic integrity in special reference to higher education’s digital transformation (McGill/JISC, 2023), and as germane to institutional and national strategic priorities for the Irish sector and, its community of technological universities. Through a blend of historical and case study analysis the report will offer a globally informed perspective to current and emerging legislative guidelines and existing procedures for the implementation and safeguarding of academic integrity (at national and institutional levels), in the midst of digital disruption, and, furthermore, as understood and enacted upon by key higher education stakeholders including funders, regulators, membership organisations, learned societies, higher education support organisations, trade unions, and publishers.
Author
Richard Watermeyer is Professor of Higher Education and Co-Director of the Centre for Higher Education Transformations at the University of Bristol. He is by training and orientation a sociologist of higher education; author of well over 100 academic articles, chapters, books and commissioned reports focused on policy and practice challenges and transformations in higher education; and the recipient of research funding for leadership of 19 (inter)national higher education research studies. Richard’s current research focus is on the sociological analyses of digital disruption in global higher education contexts. In this oeuvre he has acted as the Deputy Director of the (£1m) Digital Futures of Work programme (https://digitalfuturesofwork.com) and led an international research team into the effects of digital transitioning and AI adoption in global higher education. Such work has also featured in such analyses of the impacts of generative AI adoption by UK academic researchers (Watermeyer et al. 2024, forthcoming); in recent keynote addresses to the Research in Distance Education and E-Learning and Academic Practice and Technology conferences; and commentary pieces featured by Nature (https://www. nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00115-7) and the LSE (https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/01/22/if-generative-ai-is-saving-academics-time-what-are-they-doing-with-it/).
Danielle Guizzo is Associate Professor in Economics Education and staff researcher of the Centre for Higher Education Transformations at the University of Bristol. Her research expertise is on the political economy of higher education and the state of academic labour and knowledge production in the light of technological and economic transformations, using a combination of historical and qualitative methods to understand change. Danielle has authored 25 academic articles, co-edited a book and has written several book chapters, reports, and briefs for policymakers. She was awarded the 2024 Clarence E. Ayres scholar award from the Association for Evolutionary Economics for her research on the ceremonialism of higher education from an economic-institutionalist perspective, and has secured research grants as a P-I on the impact of research assessment tools over economics research (funded by the ESRC Rebuilding Macroeconomics Initiative) and as a co-I on how academics have been using technologies in the Covid pandemic (funded by the Royal Economics Society). Danielle has also acted as a consultant for Brazil’s Ministry of Education on the review of Brazil’s national research assessment, and as an Advisory Board member of the Review of the Subject Benchmark Statement for Economics in the UK.
Lara Dzabolova is a PhD researcher at the School of Education at the University of Bristol. Previously, Lara led the Centre for Sustainable Development within the Department of Innovation at a local university in her hometown. Her work was focused on developing sustainability-centred curriculum and research with UN WTO and UN SDSN through digital learning and communication tools.