The road to loss of academic integrity is littered with SET: A hypothetical dilemma: 5th Asia Pacific Conference on Educational Integrity

Since the rise of audit culture within Australian tertiary institutions, Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) questionnaires are widely used to provide evidence of quality teaching and to provide feedback about teaching effectiveness of academic teaching staff. Whilst the literature pertaining to SET as a tool for measuring teaching quality is extensive, enquiries pertaining to the relationship between SET, academic integrity, and ethical and professional obligations are lacking. Anecdotal evidence exists to support the notion for a potential loss of academic integrity amongst academic teaching staff, especially when SET questionnaires are used as performance management tools that can determine employment and career paths. For nursing academics, there is an obligation to both the profession and to society in general to ensure that their graduating students will be safe and competent practitioners. Using an ethical principles framework, this paper presents a hypothetical ethical dilemma in order to highlight what could happen if teachers of undergraduate nursing students were to manipulate SET in order to demonstrate their individual teaching quality.