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- This HEPI blog was authored by Isabelle Bristow, Managing Director UK and Europe at Studiosity. Studiosity is AI-for-Learning, not corrections – to scale student success, empower educators, and improve retention with a proven 4.4x ROI, while ensuring integrity and reducing institutional risk.
During September 2020, Studiosity launched the Professor Tracey Bretag Prize for Academic Integrity – an annual commitment to those who are advancing the understanding and implementation of academic integrity in the higher education sector, in honour of Tracey’s work as a researcher in the field of educational integrity.
Tracey was one of the world’s leading experts on academic integrity, founding the International Journal for Educational Integrity and serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Handbook of Academic Integrity. She spoke widely and publicly on the importance of universities taking a strong stand on educating their students about academic integrity and enforcing the rules with vigour and strong sanctions.
Tracey also came to work alongside the team at Studiosity, providing advice, guidance, and sharing her research at events. When asked for her permission to create an annual Academic Integrity award named in her honour, this was Tracey’s response:
I am so deeply honoured by your suggestion that I am almost speechless. Thank you so much for coming up with such a fabulous idea, and especially for putting it in my name. … Thank you again for this incredible recognition of my very small contribution to the field of academic integrity. As I work hard every day to try to demonstrate the type of bravery I’ve always advocated, this certainly gives me a great deal of comfort.
Tracey prematurely passed away on 7 October 2020. In February 2021, she was honoured posthumously with a Career Achievement Award from the Australian Awards for University Teaching.
Entrants over time – a five-year overview
Looking at the Award’s previous entries, we can see a clear shift in how institutions approach educational integrity:
- from a more broad-based education about what constitutes misconduct in 2020;
- towards more specialised training of large student groups;
- to a significant pivot in 2023 towards integrity projects that address the challenge of AI – specifically led by assessment redesign and the use of whole-institution frameworks.
Another change over time is certainly who and where integrity nominations are coming from – there are more dedicated institutional units for managing educational integrity now in 2025 than we saw in 2020-2021.
Tracey earned a great deal of respect globally for her evidence-based, systemic, and students-first approaches to educational integrity. It is fitting that these approaches are gaining interest and momentum in higher education at this moment. We look forward to seeing another year of evidence-based nominations, and thank our Academic Advisory Board for their time and energy once again in judging.
Feeling inspired?
As senior leadership look for ways to ethically embed generative AI within their institutions, academic integrity – the original owner of the AI acronym – is paramount. And so for this year’s prize submissions, the expectation is that the 2025 shortlist will acknowledge gen-AI as part of the challenge, show evidence of impact, and help answer the question: How can the sector keep educational integrity, humanity, and learning at the heart of the student experience?
Last year, the University of Greenwich won the UK prize for their initiative ‘Integrity Matters: Nurturing a culture of integrity through situational learning and play’. Staff there designed an interactive e-learning module (available to all education institutions under licence) designed to raise awareness of academic integrity. You can learn more here.
Sharon Perera, Head of Academic and Digital Sills who led the initiative said:
We are thrilled to have been awarded the Tracey Bretag prize for advancing best practice and the impact of academic integrity in higher education. Thank you Studiosity for championing this in the sector.
At the University of Greenwich our goal is to raise awareness of the academic conventions in research and writing and to create a culture of integrity. We are doing this through our student communities – by sharing best practice and learning about the challenges we face in the GenAI era.
Academic integrity is at greater risk than ever in the age we live in, and we need to work together to celebrate integrity and authenticity.
While sharing your initiative is for the good of the sector and a personal recognition of your tireless efforts to protect and nurture academic integrity – the prize also comprises a financial reward! You can enter this year’s prize here – nominations close 30 May. Evidence might be at the level of policy, implementation, measured student or staff participation, and/or other evidence of behaviour.