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.
This paper considers the problem of plagiarism as an issue of morality. Outrage about student plagiarism in universities positions it as dishonesty and a transgression of standards. Despite this, there has been little work analysing the implications of positioning plagiarism as a moral matter in the making of judgments about plagiarism and academic dishonesty. This paper sets the scene by reviewing research about the characteristics of students who cheat and analysing student and lecturer differences. It then discusses perspectives from moral behaviour, moral philosophy and moral reasoning. The paper concludes that emotion and reason are brought to moral judgments, and so makes a case for those who are making judgments about plagiarism to reflect on whether they are faced with a matter of morality or convention. Greater awareness of the domains of convention and morality, the issues of justice and care, the roles of emotion and reason and what is involved in making judgments, will open ways of understanding reactions to plagiarism so that better ways to deal with accusations and make judgments can be developed.
For those new to Australian academic culture, particularly international students, the emphasis on the importance of avoiding plagiarism can herald a new concept and a new way of using source material and constructing text, while for those familiar with academic culture the concepts of plagiarism may seem to need no explanation. In this paper I explore the idea that concepts of plagiarism are embedded in Australian academic culture, which explains why university lecturers as members of this academic culture can ‘know’ what plagiarism is, while new students by contrast can be concerned and confused. I argue that students new to university in Australia are entering ‘a high context culture’, which means that they are trying to learn from those within this culture whose understandings of some of the complexities of academic culture and academic writing are often implicit and taken for granted. In this paper, attitudes to text in the culture of the English speaking university are reviewed. I also review perspectives from scholars and lecturers working in the area of university learning and teaching. Finally, I suggest some critical ways of teaching about the problem of plagiarism.
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