Engaging students in integrity and ethics debates.
The E4J Modules on anti-corruption and integrity and ethics offer an innovative approach to global anti-corruption, integrity and ethics education, an area that is of critical importance to address some of the biggest challenges of our time. We hope that you, along with many educators working in universities around the world, will make use of this module series and that it adds value to new or existing course offerings, for both students and lecturers.
In this final video, Dr Nceku Nyathi, reflects on the value of engaging his students in integrity debates.
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HUGH MCFAUL
So why is ethics and integrity education important for university students, would you say?
NCEKU NYATHI
These modules are interesting in a number of ways in that they are built in such a way that they actually bring the classes alive through activities that enable students to bring their prior knowledge, their previous work experience, or examples of things that they've seen. So that enables them to actually participate rather than being talked to, so they become more interactive. It allows them, through the various diverse range of activities that challenge their perceptions: they're seeing things, they're understanding, which actually in some way, allows to bring those ideas of the philosophers to become much more relevant to today's activities, challenges and opportunities.
HUGH MCFAUL
Right. So give me an example of something that's worked particularly well in your own teaching from the modules and some of the activities. What have you found really works, really fires your students up in relation to some of the teaching? You were talking to me about Module 7 and how you use this particular technique, and that you felt the students really responded to. I was quite interested in that.
NCEKU NYATHI
Yeah, so that is one of the fascinating examples that really brought my classes alive. An example that enables students to bring themselves, and also bringing in prior knowledge, is a tale of two stories. So a tale of two stories allows students to actually examine situations where, one, they were not able to actually live their values. So they faced an ethical conflict, and they were not able to actually be ethical, or voice their values, or challenge it. So that's story one.
And then story two is an example of where they have been successful in actually voicing their values. Then the learning from there is that they're looking at strategies of what is it that makes someone to actually challenge? When is it possible to speak up, and when is it not possible to speak up? So what makes other people be able to challenge situations, or unethical things that might come about or arise within the workplace?
HUGH MCFAUL
So I think the strength with that is that you're taking students' past experiences, and you're getting them to reflect on how they successfully dealt with an ethical situation, or how they might not have done, and to kind of compare those two events and see what is it they can learn about practising. I think you called it an 'ethical muscle memory', which I thought was a great phrase.
So is that really the way you found it effective for your students? They were practising that ability to stand up for what they perhaps would recognise to be an unethical situation, but might not really understand or appreciate the ways in which they can stand up to that? Is that right?
NCEKU NYATHI
That's absolutely important, and I think you've touched on a very important point about the rehearsal and building muscle memory. Because on the one hand, we're wanting our students to go and practise, and actually be different when they finish these courses so that they're able to actually change and transform organisations. But if they haven't had practise and actually rehearsed this, they are not able to just bring this out of nowhere. It's like expecting someone to run a marathon or people playing in the Premier League to play well without actually training and practising.
HUGH MCFAUL
What impact do you think it had, the exercise, on the actual quality of the reflection that the students had?
NCEKU NYATHI
The quality of the reflection was absolutely amazing. I think it really has been one of the most enriching exercises, in terms of that it allowed the students to actually think much more deeply, one, about the organisation that they were in, what was happening and how they were able to script this and narrate it in such a way that it became part of a learning experience.
Obviously, [we] had to remind them not to be hard on themselves or punish themselves for decisions that had happened in the past, and that this was a learning experience, but the range of the things that they brought up to reflect on -- showing the disablers, things that stopped them from actually on their values and the enablers that actually enabled them to be able to practise and voice their values -- it was one of the most positive experiences that I've experienced so far in education.
I would encourage academics, lecturers out there, to consider taking these modules in order to help them in so many ways. For example, if you are wanting to stop your students from being objects of -- that come in, and just listen, and then off they go. You want students to actually listen, practise, reflect and think through, and have some exciting activities, and allow students to share interesting stories that you as the lecturer can also learn from, and make your classes much more interesting. You'll get a much more worthwhile experience working with students. I think it's -- I encourage it immensely.
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We hope you have enjoyed implementing E4J in your university.
This course has been developed by The Open University in support of the Education for Justice (E4J) initiative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
This free course has been designed to provide practical support for educators working in universities in developing their capacity to incorporate anti-corruption integrity and ethics teaching into the curriculum.
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References and further reading
Albany Education, n.d., Privilage Walk Activity. Available online at: https://www.albany.edu/ ssw/ efc/ pdf/ Module%205_1_Privilege%20Walk%20Activity.pdf
Ambrose, Susan A., Bridges, Michael W., DiPietro, Michele, Lovett, Marsha C., Norman, Marie K., 2010, How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Bain, Ken, 2004, What the Best College Teachers Do, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Blum, Susan D., 2016, "I Love Learning; I Hate School": An Anthropology of College, p. 3, Cornell University Press, London.
Brown, James, 2014, Anzac's Long Shadow: The Cost of Our National Obsession, Redback, Collingwood, Australia.
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Chew, Stepen L., n.d., Teaching Resources: How to Get the Most Out of Studying, Samford University. Available online at: https://www.samford.edu/ departments/ files/ Academic_Success_Center/ How-to-Study-Teaching_Resources.pdf
Cox, Damian, La Caze, Marguerite and Levine, Michael, 2017, Integrity, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Available online at: https://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/ spr2017/ entries/ integrity/
Daft, Richard L., 2011, The Leadership Experience, Cengage Learning, Stamford, USA.
Gentile, Mary C, 2017, Giving Voice to Values: How to Counter Rationalizations Rationally, Business, Ethics and Society, Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, USA. Available online at: https://ideas.darden.virginia.edu/ giving-voice-to-values-how-to-counter-rationalizations-rationally
Hallak, Jacques and Poisson, Muriel, (2007), Corrupt schools, corrupt universities: What can be done? Series: Ethics and corruption in education, UNESCO Press, Paris. Available online at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ images/ 0015/ 001502/ 150259e.pdf
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McKelvie-Sebileau, Pippa (2011). Patterns of development and use of codes of conduct for teachers in 24 countries. Series: Ethics and corruption in education. Paris: IIEP-UNESCO. Available online at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ images/ 0019/ 001923/ 192392e.pdf
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Rachels, James and Rachels, Stuart, 2012, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, McGraw-Hill Education, New York.
Rawls, John Bordley, 1971, A Theory of Justice, Belknap, Harvard University Press, USA.
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Acknowledgements
This course was created by The Open University in support of the E4J initiative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Our grateful thanks go to the following people who contributed to the video and audio media and articles used in this course:
Abiola Olukemi Ogunyemi, Senior Lecturer, Lagos Business School, Pan-Atlantic University
Amna Mahmood, Professor, Department of Politics & International Relations, International Islamic University
Catherine Fellow, School of Law, Melbourne University
Charles Freeland, Lecturer and Course Coordinator, International Program of Design and Architecture, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand.
Dimitri Vlassis, Chief, Corruption and Economic Crime Branch, UNODC
Donhatai Harris, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Economics, University of Oxford
Francine Ryan, Lecturer, Faculty of Business and Law, The Open University Law School, UK
Hugh McFaul, Lecturer, Faculty of Business and Law, The Open University Law School, UK
Ioannis Papageorgiou, Associate Professor, School of Political Sciences, Aristotle University, Greece
Jay Albanese, Professor, Wilder School of Government & Public Affairs, Virginia Commonwealth University, USA
James M. Lang, Director, The Center for Teaching Excellence, Assumption College, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA
Nceku Nyathi, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Business and Law, De Montfort University, UK
Nikolas Kirby, Associate Professor, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford
Richard Lucas, Visiting Professor, Australian National University
Sigall Horovitz, Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Officer, UNODC
Stephanie Maher, Postdoctoral Fellow, African Centre for Migration and Society, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa
Thomas William Cooper, Professor, Department of Visual & Media Arts, Emerson College, USA
Timothy Kuhner, Associate Professor of Law, University of Auckland
Ugljesa Zvekic, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Belgrade
Zucheng Zhou, Professor of Management & Business Ethics, Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
We also acknowledge the use of other media within the course:
ETICO – UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning in Unit 1
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy used throughout the course
MindTools in Units 3 and 4
YouTube in Units 4 and 7
Stephen L. Chew in Unit 7
BBC/OU in Unit 7
Wired.com in Unit 7
