🔥 Ready, Steady, Integrity!
A playful academic-integrity cooking challenge for HE students
Students cook up an assignment process, survive kitchen disasters, and serve a defensible signature dish.
20–30 minutes
Groups of 4–6
AI-ready
International Day of Action for Academic Integrity 2026
Recipes for Integrity: Sharing your signature dish
Activity overview
HE student workshop
Ready, Steady, Integrity! • International Day of Action for Academic Integrity 2026
What students will practise
The activity turns academic integrity from a rulebook into a live decision-making process.
1. Make learning visible
Show how researching, drafting, source use, feedback, AI support and revision create authentic academic work.
2. Manage pressure
Respond to realistic academic “kitchen disasters”: deadlines, group work, weak sources, AI hallucinations and tempting shortcuts.
3. Defend decisions
Explain why the final dish is transparent, fair, verified and genuinely their own intellectual work.
Core message: whatever tools help students cook it, they remain responsible for what they serve.
Facilitator route
30-minute version
Ready, Steady, Integrity! • International Day of Action for Academic Integrity 2026
The cooking sequence
🍽️
Choose the
Assignment Dish
🧺
Open the
Mystery Pantry
🔥
Survive a
Kitchen Disaster
🤖
Draw an
AI Wild Card
⭐
Serve the
Signature Dish
Timing guide
2 min: hook
4 min: dish + pantry
7 min: cooking choices
5 min: disaster5 min: AI wildcard
5 min: presentations
2 min: individual pledge
Facilitator tone
Keep it lively. Students should laugh, argue, explain and revise. The aim is defensible judgement, not perfect rule-recitation.
Stage 1
Choose your dish
Ready, Steady, Integrity! • International Day of Action for Academic Integrity 2026
Every kitchen starts with an assignment dish
🍝
2,000-Word Lasagne
Critical essay
🍚
Research Risotto
Research project
🥘
Presentation Paella
Group presentation
🥩
Dissertation Wellington
Dissertation chapter
🥟
Reflective Ravioli
Reflective writing
🍰
Literature-Review Layer Cake
Literature review
Prompt: “You are not just producing a final plate. You must explain the cooking method behind the assignment.”
Stage 2
Mystery pantry
Ready, Steady, Integrity! • International Day of Action for Academic Integrity 2026
Funny ingredients with serious decisions
🧠
Original Intellectual Labour
🧂
Citation Salt
🤖
AI Assistance — label partly missing
🧀
Copy-and-Paste Cheddar
🍄
Non-existent Reference Mushrooms
🌶️
Deadline Panic
🥛
Peer Advice
🍋
Healthy Scepticism
🧈
Generative-AI Butter
🥫
Vintage Wikipedia Tin
Key rule
No ingredient is automatically banned or blessed. Teams must decide how to use, verify, replace, limit or discard each ingredient.
Stage 3
Kitchen disasters
Ready, Steady, Integrity! • International Day of Action for Academic Integrity 2026
Turn up the heat
🔥 Deadline Flambé
Seven hours left. 900 words missing. What changes in your process without sacrificing integrity?
🧯 The Reference Has Gone Off
Your key source does not say what you thought. Do you rewrite, replace, or quietly pretend?
🤖 The AI Soufflé Collapses
The AI summary sounds brilliant but invents a finding. What verification step saves the dish?
🍝 Too Many Cooks
A group member submits suspiciously perfect work. What does fair collaboration require?
🥧 Grandma’s Secret Recipe
Last year’s assignment appears “for inspiration only”. Where is the line between learning and copying?
Stage 4
AI wildcard
Ready, Steady, Integrity! • International Day of Action for Academic Integrity 2026
AI can be sous-chef — not Head Chef
🤖
Teams write three things AI may do and three things AI must not do for their specific assignment dish.
May do
Suggest search terms
Generate quiz questions for revision
Explain a difficult concept
Suggest structure options
Offer proofreading prompts
Must not do
Invent references
Replace reading
Write the assessed answer
Hide its use when disclosure is required
Make unverified claims sound certain
Food-safety warning: “May contain inaccuracies, invented references, confident nonsense and traces of somebody else’s assumptions.”
Stage 5
Cooking method
Ready, Steady, Integrity! • International Day of Action for Academic Integrity 2026
Students complete the Signature Dish worksheet
🍽️ Dish
What assignment are you cooking?
🧺 Ingredients
Sources, feedback, peers, tools, data, examples
🔪 Preparation
Reading, planning, question analysis, evidence selection
🍳 Cooking method
Research, drafting, citation, revision and checking
🌡️ Food-safety checks
Verify sources, AI output, references and fairness
✨ Secret ingredient
What makes this genuinely your work?
This is the evidence of process: students make authorship, judgement and responsibility visible.
Stage 6
Integrity critics
Ready, Steady, Integrity! • International Day of Action for Academic Integrity 2026
Serve the dish and face the critics
Each kitchen presents in 60 seconds. Peers award Integrity Stars for the quality of the process, not for the prettiest poster.
⭐ Authenticity
Can we see the student’s intellectual contribution?
⭐ Transparency
Are sources, people and technologies acknowledged?
⭐ Verification
Were claims, data and AI outputs checked?
⭐ Fairness
Would this feel fair to other students?
⭐ Learning
Did the process require real thinking?
⭐ Courage
Were responsible decisions made under pressure?
Final chant: SERVE IT! 🍽️ or BACK TO THE KITCHEN! 🔥
Final pledge
Individual takeaway
Ready, Steady, Integrity! • International Day of Action for Academic Integrity 2026
My Signature Dish for Integrity
My academic dish is…
My three essential ingredients are…
One ingredient I need to use carefully is…
When the kitchen gets hot, I will…
Chef’s promise
“Whatever tools help me cook it, I remain responsible for what I serve.”
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC
Teodora Ivancheva-Atanasova, Global Banking School
Activity concept developed with support from OpenAI’s ChatGPT (2026), used for brainstorming and resource development. Final activity design and adaptation by the author.