Author: Guy Curtis, University of Western Australia
Focus area: Academic integrity breach decision-making
For about 3 years I acted as the academic staff member within my School and was responsible for dealing with cases of alleged student academic misconduct. In my School there were large first-year psychology units that often had enrolments of around 1,000 students. The first edition of the TEQSA Academic Integrity Toolkit included a guide to substantiating contract cheating, within which is “An investigator template for conducting a student academic integrity interview”. I decided to use this template for interviews with students who were reported by their first-year psychology unit coordinators for plagiarism.
Looking at text-matching software (for example, Turnitin), it was often the case that first-year students had either failed to indicate quoted text with quotation marks and page numbers or failed to provide name and date citations on paraphrased text. Two questions in the Toolkit’s interview guide were particularly helpful in working out whether students misunderstood referencing rules, misapplied referencing rules or understood referencing rules and chose not to follow them:
- What referencing system/style did you use?
- In the referencing system you used, are there any differences in how quotes and paraphrased material should be represented?
Students in first-year psychology would typically answer the first question with “APA style”. Their answer to the second question usually aligned with the errors in citations and referencing that were apparent in their assignment. For example, if a student had verbatim quotes without quotation marks, but with a name and date in brackets afterwards, they would usually say that the way to cite a quote is to put a name and year in brackets after it. This answer would reveal that they were trying to do the right thing, but didn’t understand that quotes had to be cited differently from paraphrased material. Similarly, students without citations on paraphrased materials might say that citations were only needed for quotes. First-year students’ answers to these structured questions often helped to foster educational conversations about citation rules and allowed me to direct them to relevant information about citation and writing.
In units of 1,000 students, some will miss, or misunderstand, information about academic integrity without any intention of plagiarising or gaining an unfair advantage by doing so. When such students end up being referred for investigation into alleged misconduct, it can undoubtedly be stressful for them. Confronting students with accusations, rather than asking questions that seek to understand how their assessments were written, may exacerbate such stresses. The benefit of good questions in identifying educational gaps means that perceived punitive processes can be turned into teachable moments. At the same time, recording within the university system that these conversations had taken place meant that, going forward, ignorance of the rules could not be used as an excuse by the same students for future instances of plagiarism.
Key lessons or points for implementation
- A structured approach for investigating allegations of academic misconduct is crucial.
- Using questions that allow investigators to seek information, rather than making allegations or assumptions leads to better outcomes.
- Plagiarism among first-year students is often a case of misunderstanding or misapplying rules. An allegation of plagiarism for first-year students can often be a chance to correct misunderstanding via one-on-one educational conversations.
Academic integrity toolkit