During a challenging but fun weekend, 45 enquiring minds from all over Armenia stood-up to the challenge of ‘hacking’ corruption and increasing integrity in higher education with creative ideas and unconventional communication tools.

 Short film about the academic hackathon activity

The Apella Institute organised a two-day creative Academic Integrity Hackathon with the support of the Council of Europe and European Union “Strengthening Integrity and Combatting Corruption in Higher Education in Armenia” project, on 8-9 July in Yerevan.

Students and other creative minds from 9 leading universities brainstormed ideas about integrity in the higher education in Armenia. Students of political science, marketing and public relations, including 20 people from the regions of Armenia, came together for the team work and brainstorming, under supervision of experienced mentors, on possible online and offline communications campaigns to make a case about corruption risks in the higher education in Armenia.

With the assistance of mentors, the three winning teams (out of eight) will work on developing their communication campaigns in the course of August-September. The roll-out campaigns and stocktaking workshop with campaign authors are planned for late September 2017.

This activity was carried out under the European Union and Council of Europe "Partnership for Good Governance for Eastern Partnership countries".