Changing student attitudes and behaviours to Academic Integrity through reflection with a conversational agent

Facilitated by technology, breaches of academic integrity take many different forms such as using the information as it is, collusion, fabricating information, and contract cheating. To counteract, universities offer academic integrity modules, policies, and procedures for students to follow on their websites. However, academic misconduct is still rampant. With advancements in technology, higher education institutions have an opportunity to promote ethical principles in innovative ways. In this paper, we present a work-in-progress collaborative project that proposes use of an artificially intelligent pedagogical conversational agent. The approach seeks to augment existing ways of educating students about academic integrity concepts by seeking to change their underlying motivations and beliefs about academic integrity and the consequences of misconduct through reflective review and discussion of the reasons why, consequences of and alternatives to committing academic misconduct.