It is the highest number of breaches since 2021 (118) and the bulk of them (71) occurred during internal assessment, rather than exams.
Nearly half of the misconduct findings (46) occurred in health sciences, the report said.
Principal adviser academic integrity Dr Lee Adam, who helped author the report, told the Otago Daily Times that the 2025 increase was largely driven by two specific incidents, rather than a broad shift in behaviour across the university.
"The first is outlined in the report and relates to a case in the Division of Health Sciences.
"The second was in the Division of Humanities and involved the early disclosure of examination content in a law exam."
Dr Adam said it was nonetheless "disappointing" for the number of breaches to spike this year, especially in regards to the "collusion" among first-year health science students.
"All students involved underwent the university’s formal academic misconduct process and appropriate penalties were applied in line with university statues and the academic integrity policy.
"Following this incident, significant changes were made in semester 2 to both the conduct of final exams and the design of internal assessments.
"These changes were specifically aimed at reducing opportunities for collusion and making any attempted misconduct more readily identifiable."
The report said academic misconduct could be a variety of different breaches, from plagiarism in submitted assignments to being in possession of unauthorised material in final examinations, as well as collusion in final examinations.
However, the authors noted that since the emergence of AI software such as ChatGPT in late 2022, plagiarism and other forms of cheating were getting harder to police and detect.
In June 2023 the University implemented the Australasian Academic Integrity Network guidelines for using AI in teaching and learning, which left individual teachers with the responsibility of determining and making explicit, if or how students in their classes could use AI for their assessments.
This led to a number of cases of academic misconduct involving the use of AI in 2023 and 2024.
"While AI tools can provide valuable learning support when used appropriately, they also introduce new risks," Dr Adam said.
"This is why the University has strengthened both its guidelines for students and staff and its institutional capability to manage these emerging challenges.
"However, the two specific incidents which led to an increase in cases this year were not related specifically to AI."
A new policy is due to be implemented later this year, and the academic integrity policy will be revised accordingly.
