Academic integrity is defined by the University as: acting with the values of honesty, respect, trust, responsibility and support in learning, teaching, and research. A breach of academic integrity is any act that is contrary to these values.
Types of Academic Integrity Breaches
The following is a quick reference guide to the different types of breaches* included in the University Academic Integrity Policy (Schedule 2)
*Please note that these breach types are not mutually exclusive.
|Cheating||Any attempt to dishonestly give or obtain assistance from another person, material, or device in an academic exercise.|
|Contract-cheating||Having another person or entity conceive, research or write material for an assignment and submitting the work as one’s own, irrespective of whether the other person or entity was paid for the material.|
|Collusion||Unauthorised collaboration in producing an academic exercise that is designated as an individual task.|
|Deception||Providing false or misleading information to the University.|
|Fabrication||Forge or falsify any information or citation in an academic exercise or report false or misleading results or conclusions of any research.|
|Impersonation||Is pretending or assuming another person’s identity or using a substitute person for the purposes of providing an advantage.|
|Obstruction||Intentionally impeding or interfering with another person’s academic activity.|
|Plagiarism||Adopting or reproducing the work or ideas of another person, whether intentionally or not, and presenting this as one’s own without clearly acknowledging the source of the work or ideas.|
|Sabotage||Acting to prevent or hinder another person from completing an academic exercise to the best of their abilities including by making information or material unavailable to others or disrupting or interfering with an academic exercise, experiments, research or other academic activity of any other person.|
|Self-plagiarism||Unacknowledged use of material you have previously published or submitted.|
Why is Academic Integrity Important?
It is worthwhile to consider the different types of harm that can be potentially caused by breaches of academic integrity, as this can provide insight into areas that can be shortlisted for potential intervention. The categories of harm can be divided into three broad areas, as follows:
1. Harm to Scholarship
- Breaches of academic integrity undermine good scholarship. The harm can occur at many levels across learning and teaching. The most obvious harm lies in hampering effective assessment of what students have learned in their courses.
- Students who are not submitting work based on their own understanding and analysis of the content being studied are at risk of not meeting the learning outcomes set for their unit/course.
- Assessors marking work that has been copied, incorrectly cited or produced by another person altogether, cannot conduct a realistic appraisal of students’ competencies.
- Persistent and pervasive breaches of academic integrity in a course can have flow-on effects such as a skewed perception of standards and expectations relating to how students perform in the course. This can in turn impact the way the curriculum is designed in future courses.
- The practice of good scholarship is not just about demonstrating authentic learning in assessments. It is also about being part of an academic community, where members recognising and building on the contributions of other scholars. Failure to do this makes it more challenging to track how a theory, ideal, model or concept has evolved through the academic literature, over time.
2. Harm to Reputation and Trust
- If inappropriately managed, academic integrity breaches may damage students’ and staff confidence in the consistency and adequacy of academic integrity policies and procedures.
- Students who witness inconsistencies in how breach cases are may distrust their university’s ability to ensure fairness.
- Frequently occurring breaches may promote the normalisation of breach behaviours.
- Systemic academic integrity breaches t