Strengthening Integrity and Ethical Culture in Regional Higher Education

forthcoming

SINCERE project aims at improving the academic integrity and ethical culture in HEIs in Albania and Kosovo, targeting an impact at the individual, institutional and systemic level. The project addresses important challenges: lack of structured policies/procedures on academic integrity, limited/no access to digital tools to monitor and report cases of ethical violation and the “brain drain” phenomenon due to lack of equal opportunities in Higher Education. The project seeks to implement an institutional framework on academic integrity. It includes clear policies handling ethical violations, anti-plagiarism software to detect similarity and AI generated content and a dashboard to monitor faculty performance implemented in all 5 partner beneficiary HEIs. To achieve sustainable implementation, a Task Force on Academic Integrity will be established in each WB institution, which will assist applying and monitoring new policies/procedures. Capacity building will be supported by administrative and academic staff trainings focused on managing ethical misconduct and access to digital tools. One of the outputs of the project is the Regional Academic Integrity Network which will support cooperation among partner institutions in exchanging best practices, developing common shared policies/procedures on academic integrity after the EU settled standards. This network will continue performing its duties beyond the project’s life-cycle aiming at setting long-term cooperation impacting national policies in HE. The expected results of the project range from an increased level of awareness on academic integrity among students and staff, a decrease in the number of ethical violations, to enhanced transparency level of academic assessment and strengthening of admin capacities of partner institutions. The project contributes directly to the action’s objectives of enhancing quality of HE, capacity building and regional cooperation through improving common standards of academic integrity