The University of Western Australia Reforms Assessment to Strengthen Academic Integrity using Cadmus

The University of Western Australia’s Challenge:

The University of Western Australia (UWA) embarked on an assessment reform journey, which focused on transitioning to authentic assessments and enhancing assessment design to strengthen the student experience, support learning and success in assessment and foster academic integrity.

Rather than increasing technological capabilities to catch academic misconduct, the University of Western Australia was seeking to improve assessment quality and support to enhance students’ sense of belonging and connection to the university.

The university partnered with Cadmus to mobilise its assessment reform journey, which centred around the following objectives:

• Transition away from high-stakes invigilated exams and implement alternative authentic assessments, which will support students in their workplace competency where integrity, problem-solving and continuous learning are required.
• Design assessments that will scaffold students through the development of their assessment, promote learning, and academically honest behaviour.
• Provide students with timely feedback in assessment as a means to foster academic integrity and support the development of self-regulating skills among learners.
• Support faculty stakeholders and educators through the appropriate tools and resources to successfully enhance assessment literacy and assessment quality institution-wide.

Cadmus Solution

Cadmus enhanced academic integrity outcomes across the University of Western Australia through high-quality scaffolded assessments and a supportive student working environment, which provided point-of-need academic integrity guidance, support resources, and access to real-time educator feedback.

Authentic, Scaffolded Assessments for Every Discipline

Cadmus’ end-to-end assessment capabilities enabled UWA educators to seamlessly implement alternative authentic assessments through pre-built, scaffolded assessment templates suitable for every academic discipline and assessment type.

Cadmus assessment templates have been developed on the principles of best-practice assessment design, which supported authentic student engagement, inclusive and equitable assessment experiences, and enhanced academic integrity across the university.

Further, within Cadmus, educators were supported with assessment analytics at both cohort and individual student levels. These rich insights enabled educators to understand assessment quality and improve assessment design to deliver a well-structured, engaging learning experience every time.

Guided Student Workspace to Support Assessment Outcomes

For UWA students, the Cadmus student workspace enabled the ability to draft assessments with academic guidance and support, receive real-time educator feedback, and submit with confidence through one intuitive environment.

While working through assessment tasks in Cadmus, students were supported with scaffolded assessment checklists, readily available academic resources, educative nudges prompting students to re-write or paraphrase work that appeared inauthentic, and custom time reminders to guide timely assessment progression.

Cadmus’ supportive features enabled UWA students of varying locations and backgrounds to clearly understand their assessment requirements, engage authentically with the task at hand and deterred opportunity for academic misconduct.

Balanced Approach to Academic Integrity and AI-Language Models

The Cadmus platform has been built on rich pedagogical principles to support students throughout the learning and assessment process, taking a balanced approach to academic integrity through education, prevention and detection.

To assure the authenticity of student work presented for grading, UWA stakeholders and educators benefited from Cadmus Academic Integrity Assurance Analytics, which monitors the process around student assessment construction. Analytics show how many hours a student has spent writing their assessment, if work was copied, pasted or transcribed into Cadmus and if the work appears inauthentic - including through the use of AI-Language Models.

Providing UWA educators with real-time insights into student assessment progression and working behaviours enabled early intervention for students who appeared at risk of academic misconduct, enabling the ability to guide them back on track before the point of submission.

Cadmus Approach

Cadmus completed the following major phases of work for the University of Western Australia to support seamless implementation of high-quality authentic assessments and assurance of academic integrity in an online environment.

Assessment Re-Design to Support Academic Integrity

The Cadmus Academic Team redesigned all applicable UWA assessments for an online environment prior to the commencing semester, ensuring assessments promoted an inclusive and equitable experience, student engagement and academic integrity.

Customised Setup of Academic Integrity Resources into Cadmus

The Cadmus student workspace was customised with UWA’s assessment support resources to foster academic integrity through point-of-need guidance, which included Academic Skills Guidance, Academic Integrity Policies and AI-Language Model Education.

Education Forums on Assessment Design and Academic Integrity

Cadmus supported UWA senior stakeholders and educators with regular 1:1 and group education sessions on best-practice assessment design for an online environment and harnessing Cadmus Academic Integrity Analytics to promote successful assessment outcomes and to support academic integrity.

Supportive AI-Language Model Resources

Through the advent of AI-Language Models, Cadmus updated the UWA student workspace to incorporate pre-assessment educational guidance on the appropriate and inappropriate use of AI, in addition to declarations of acknowledgement to support academic integrity. In addition, Cadmus continues to support UWA senior stakeholders and educators with training on platform capabilities to identify and minimise opportunities for misuse.

The University of Western Australia’s Outcomes

Cadmus supported UWA to achieve the following enhanced assessment and academic integrity outcomes. Student results reflect 53,898 unique student outcomes between 2021 – 2023 to date.

Student Outcomes

Improved Student Assessment Experience

89.29% of students reported a positive assessment experience when supported by Cadmus, which is an 18.69% increase on pre-Cadmus results, as measured against the National Student Experience Survey, 2020.

Increased Assessment Pass Rates

88.77% of students received a passing grade, directly attributed to the educative and supportive environment within the Cadmus platform, which improves students’ ability to understand, progress and submit assessments with confidence.

Improved Academic Integrity

14.10% was the average student Turnitin similarity score, with Turnitin’s benchmark of below 20% indicating authentic student work. Amongst all students supported by Cadmus, only 9.87% presented at risk of academic misconduct through Cadmus Academic Integrity Assurance Analytics, which enabled educators to seamlessly identify, contact and support students to success.

Enhanced Feedback Utilisation

57.12% of students accessed assessment feedback prior to submission through the Cadmus platform, which fostered academic integrity and supported improved pass rates across the institution.

Greater Engagement with Assessment Tasks

Cadmus Assessment Analytics showed measurable, authentic student engagement with assessment tasks.

It was seen that on average, students completed their assessments in Cadmus over 6 unique working sessions, received 3 educative nudges each prompting them to paraphrase or re-write work that appeared inauthentic and accessed in-app academic resources 8 times to successfully progress through assessment and foster academic integrity.

Educator Outcomes

Improved Assessment Design Capabilities

97% of educators agreed that Cadmus reduced assessment administration workloads attributed to setting up new assessments and improved assessment literacy.

Reduced Academic Integrity Workloads

92% of educators agreed that Cadmus improved their ability to identify and support students at risk of academic misconduct before the point of submission, therefore reducing workloads attributed to academic integrity investigations.