Integrating academic and professional integrity: a co-designed serious game for nursing students - a multi-methods study

Academic integrity constitutes a cornerstone of higher education, epitomising values such as honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility. However, breaches in academic integrity persist among nursing students. Current responses to breaches predominantly adopt reactive and punitive measures, lacking proactive initiatives that cultivate active learning. Moreover, traditional didactic teaching methodologies may fail to resonate with the digital-native characteristics of contemporary students. Consequently, a discernible gap exists regarding novel approaches to instilling and upholding academic integrity within nursing education. The aim of this study is to explore and evaluate whether a co-designed serious game linking academic integrity and professionalism promotes motivation for self-perceived learning for first year undergraduate nursing students at one university in Northern Ireland. Using multi-methods, this study employed a pre-post validated 34-item Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire before and after students played the game, and qualitative focus groups that explored the students’ experience of playing the game and impact on academic practice. Quantitative results (n = 233) showed significance across the 6 sub-scales of the Modified Strategies for Learning Questionnaire including self-efficacy, peer learning and help-seeking. Three themes were developed from focus groups (n = 39) in relation to usability, professional values and transferable skills. The study findings indicate the game had a positive impact on motivation, critical thinking, and self-regulation among participants and successfully correlated academic integrity with universally shared nursing values, such as honesty, accountability, and openness. Suggesting that the integration of case-based learning within a serious game offers a proactive, rather than punitive, approach to academic misconduct education, with potential applicability across diverse cultural and professional contexts.