Plagiaruedo*: teaching of academic integrity through a ‘whodunnit’ game (*any likeness to other games is intentional!)

Abstract

An academic crime has been committed – someone has been caught plagiarising!

Did Prof. Crastinator forget quotation marks due to poor time management, or did Larry Lastminute deliberately cheat by submitting text generated by artificial intelligence (AI)?

This workshop invited delegates to play ‘Plagiaruedo’, a board game designed and used to raise students’ awareness of academic integrity. In the game, participants visited departments of the University of Portsmouth, tasked with figuring out who plagiarised, how they did it and why they did it, before submitting their answer to ‘Turnitin’ … but beware – an incorrect answer meant failing the assignment!

Academic integrity is often regarded as a serious topic, making it potentially challenging to teach without resorting to dry or even punitive materials. Through Plagiaruedo, presenters hoped to challenge traditional teaching methods and play with a subject matter that is not traditionally played with (Sicart, 2014), creating an open learning environment that encourages students to try something new (Whitton and Moseley, 2019). Presenters reflected on experimenting with their Learning Development (LD) practice and finding that play has purpose within higher education (James, 2019).

Following the game, delegates were asked for feedback on using Plagiaruedo as a catalyst for subsequent academic integrity activities, before the presenters shared their own in-class examples. Feedback from this ‘playtest’ will help improve future iterations of Plagiaruedo. Playfully-minded colleagues had the opportunity to join presenters for a potential research project about perceptions of the game, to enhance the evidence base for playful learning in higher education.