Abstract
This paper reports on one important aspect of the preliminary findings from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) project, Academic integrity standards: Aligning policy and practice in Australian universities (Bretag et al., 2010) Our project aims to identify approaches to the complex issues of academic integrity, and then to build on these approaches to develop exemplars for adaptation across the higher education sector. Based on analysis of publicly available online academic integrity policies at each of the 39 Australian universities, we have identified five core elements of exemplary academic integrity policy. These have been grouped under the headings, Access, Approach, Responsibility, Detail and Support, with no element given priority over another. In this paper we compare the five core elements identified in our research with best practice guidelines recommended by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) in the UK. We conclude that an exemplar policy needs to provide an upfront, consistent message, reiterated throughout the entire policy, which indicates a systemic and sustained commitment to the values of academic integrity and the practices that ensure it. Whereas the HEA created two discrete resources, the key aim and challenge of this project will be to develop exemplars that demonstrate a strong alignment between policy and practice.
Highlights
How a university defines and explains the role of academic integrity (AI) in its policy will affect the way it is taught and embedded in the curriculum
In the Australian higher education context, the need for consistency in academic integrity was highlighted by the AUQA audit of one university which found inconsistent practice in the application of academic honesty information and testing across the faculties as well as lost opportunities to educate students about academic integrity, and potentially inconsistent application of penalties (AUQA, 2010)
The approach taken was to determine the main document related to academic integrity policy and only consider additional documents if embedded links were provided in the main policy document
Summary
How a university defines and explains the role of academic integrity (AI) in its policy will affect the way it is taught and embedded in the curriculum. In the UK, the call to examine consistency in academic integrity came from the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education who declared that variation in penalties for plagiarism across the higher education sector was indefensible. This led to the development of the project, ‘Academic Misconduct Benchmarking Research (AMBeR)’ (Tennant, Rowell, & Duggan, 2007). Cognisant of the value of consistency, this ALTC project seeks to uncover evidence of this congruence by, amongst other things, analysing university policy in relation to academic integrity
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