Academic Integrity as an Important Component in Enhancing Education Quality

Abstract

For the first time at the normative level, the concept of "academic integrity" was enshrined in the Law of Ukraine "On Education," which was adopted in 2017. Article 42 of the Law defines academic integrity as a set of ethical principles and rules that must be followed by participants in the educational process to ensure trust in the results of training and/or scientific achievements. The education quality assurance system has three structural components: the quality assurance system in educational institutions, the system of external assurance of the quality of education, and the system of quality assurance in the activities of management bodies and institutions that provide external assurance of the quality of education. The participants in the educational process who are subject to the principles of academic integrity are pedagogical, scientificpedagogical, and scientific workers, as well as students of education.
 The objective of this study is to assess the level of knowledge of students at the second (Master's) level of higher education in the "Medicine" program at Poltava State Medical University regarding violations of academic integrity depending on the course of study.
 Materials and methods: The study involved 117 students at the second (Master's) level of higher education in the OPP "Medicine" program at Poltava State Medical University. Among them, 73 people studied in the third year and 44 in the second year of medical faculties at the university. The study tested the students' ability to recognize various violations of academic integrity, such as plagiarism, falsification, fabrication, writing off, and deception using specific examples. Respondents were offered an anonymous questionnaire containing 10 situations regarding academic integrity issues where they had to identify violations if present. The questionnaire also included questions about respondents' demographics, such as age, gender, and year of education.
 Conclusion: The majority of the surveyed secondand third-year students in the "Medicine" program at Poltava State Medical University (72.72% and 79.45%, respectively) demonstrated a sufficient or rather sufficient level of knowledge regarding violations of academic integrity.