We are pleased to welcome three exceptional plenary speakers: Yana Chapailo, Dr. Nikoloz Parjanadze, and Dr. Irine Darchia. Read about their professional background and abstracts below.
Project Coordinator, Academic Integrity and Quality Initiative, American Councils for International Education
Yana Chapailo works at American Councils for International Education as a project coordinator of the Academic Integrity and Quality Initiative. Before occupying a project coordinator position, she had been working in the sphere of academic integrity and educational quality for 5 years at Strengthening Academic Integrity in Ukraine Project – SAIUP and Seeding Academic Integrity in Secondary Schools Project – SAISS. She was a working group member on developing an Article “Academic Integrity” for Law on Education and Law on Secondary Education. She has aslo developed an online course titled “Academic Integrity for Teachers”, the concept for the course “Academic Writing and Integrity” for freshmen students, and the concept for a course titled “Academic Integrity for Librarians”. She is always excited to discuss academic integrity with students and teachers, learn new ideas, and implement them to support the Ukrainian sphere of education.
In her plenary speech, Yana Chapailo will provide an overview of the online course she designed titled “Academic Integrity for Teachers.” She will share tips and tricks to work with students and support academic integrity culture in a classroom, as well as to address teachers’ and parents’ perspectives on academic integrity. She will discuss how motivation and the professional orientation in high schools has a lasting influence on approaches to academic integrity in higher education. She will conclude by considering how grading influences academic integrity habits.
Affiliated Professor, International Black Sea University, Tbilisi, Georgia
Dr. Nikoloz Parjanadze has held various responsibilities across his career and has worked at several universities, among which Akaki Tsereteli State University (Kutaisi, Georgia), Georgian Agrarian University (Tbilisi, Georgia), and American University of the Middle East (Kuwait City, Kuwait). He holds MA degrees in English Philology from Akaki Tsereteli State University and in Educational Leadership and Management from the Institute of Education, University College London, as well as a PhD in English Philology from Akaki Tsereteli State University. Currently he is an Affiliated Professor at International Black Sea University (Tbilisi, Georgia) and is in charge of the research development unit. He delivers lectures in linguistics, educational research, educational leadership, management and administration and is involved in education journal editing and university projects aiming at education enhancement and research capacity building. His publications reflect his interest in Anglo-American linguistics and education leadership. Most recently Dr. Parjanadze participated in a Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program at the University of Arkansas (USA), where he researched the internationalization of higher education.
Academic integrity is not a completely new phenomenon in former Soviet countries; however, the concept still needs to be treated with much care and accuracy as critical thinking, reasoning and ownership over intellectual domain do bear a different connotation from the Western understanding of academic honesty. Accordingly, it is of crucial importance to revisit this concept, define it with precision, and explain how this complex domain should be dealt with. To do so, the definition of academic integrity will be offered by synthesizing various scholars’ views, and the concept of Creative Commons will be scrutinized in order to demonstrate how people in academia can contribute to and gain much benefit from having access to one another’s intellectual property. Authentic material will be shown to demonstrate how present this concept might be in people’s lives, and how much it is often ignored, even in academia.
Higher Education Reform Expert (HERE), Erasmus+ National Office Georgia
Associate Professor in Classics, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University
Dr. Irine Darchia has been an Associate Professor in Classics at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU) since 1996 and a Higher Education Reform Expert (HERE) of Tempus/Erasmus+ National Office Georgia since 2009. Since 2005, she has served as a Head of Quality Assurance Service and Vice-Rector of Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Rector’s Adviser at National Defence Academy, TSU and University of Georgia, Vice-Rector of East European University, and Head of Higher Education and Science Development Department of the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia (MES). She is a member of the International Advisory Board of the National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance of Ukraine (NAQA), as well as an authorization and accreditation expert at NCEQE (Georgia), SKVC (Lithuania) and AIKA (Latvia). As a representative of the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia, Dr. Darchia took part in the development of the legislative background to promote academic integrity and prevent plagiarism in 2015-2017. As an authorization expert of the National Center of Educational Quality Enhancement (NCEQE), she is participating in the external evaluation of HEI development, including academic integrity.
In this plenary, Dr. Darchia will address the legislative background, development, and implications of National and Institutional regulations for enhancing academic integrity and preventing plagiarism in the Higher Education and Research System of Georgia since the fall of the Soviet Union. She will discuss the impact of joining the Bologna Process and European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and of Internationalization and External Quality Assuranceas triggers of legislative change, as well as of the Research Project run by the Higher Education Reform Experts (HEREs) titled “The Problem of Plagiarism and Its Perceptions in Georgia” and the Erasmus+ CBHE Project “INTEGRITY”. In her speech, Dr. Darchia will explore the challenges of the Higher Education and Research System of Georgia in terms of academic integrity, as well as the ways how to overcome these challenges and strengthen the academic culture, based on honesty, trust and quality.