Academic Integrity

LEARNING ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

The Secondary Academic Integrity Committee, Bangkok Patana School Chairs: Andrew Roff, Senior Teacher – Curriculum and Assessment and Meadow Armiger, Year 11. Other Members: Emily Fuchs, Nandini Mehrotra, Tanzila Sumaiya, Year 10. Porpiang Bunnag, Darsh Rawat, Year 7.

Essential values that we hold dear as a community of learners are a commitment to being responsible and honest as well as ethical and informed. These are all aspects of integrity, one of the most important assets that any of us have. Over recent years we have driven an agenda of increasing the prominence of Academic Integrity throughout the Secondary School at Bangkok Patana. While we are proud of the high standards of integrity which continue to be demonstrated by our community, this must not simply be assumed but actively taught.

With this in mind over the last two years, the Academic Integrity Committee has:

• Revised, had approved and published a Secondary Academic

Integrity Policy; • Worked with key stakeholders to publish an Academic Integrity curriculum, which continues to be embedded within subjects throughout

Secondary; • Collaborated with the New South

Wales Board of Studies to create a series of online modules that students complete every year to ensure understanding of and adherence to the key principles of Academic Integrity in their work at Bangkok Patana; • Presented to parents at coffee mornings theoretical scenarios that they might encounter to encourage discussion about how best to support their children’s understanding and adherence to our shared high standards of integrity.

This year the Academic Integrity Committee consists of a group of students younger than previous committees which has ensured that we have been inclusive of their views. The committee has worked on constructing a notice board highlighting key aspects of academic integrity to the student population and writing the following article highlighting two very important aspects of it.

The fine line between collaboration and collusion

Collusion is giving or receiving too much help with your work, whereas collaboration is a valuable learning attribute. For example, a student checking their history essay the day before it is due is getting some help from their mum. If she is making corrections to the spelling, grammar or content herself without discussing it with her child, then she is giving too much help. However, if mum is reading it out loud and pointing out where there is a mistake or error for her child to correct, then this is being highly supportive of her child’s learning.

Different pieces of work require different amounts of collaboration. For example, can you imagine trying to play a football game on your own or an orchestra with only one musician? Whereas how much room is there for lots of people to be working together on an essay intended to demonstrate one student’s learning on a topic?

It is important to understand where the line lies between collaboration and collusion. Depending on the task set, the same action might be seen as either one. Because of this, it is really important that teachers clearly explain the learning intentions for any particular activity and that students know where the limit lies between giving and receiving a suitable amount and too much help. Key to this is asking questions so that students are very clear on expectations for a task.

Examples of the sort of questions that students might ask to avoid collusion:

• Do I have to do this on my own (is this an independent task) or can I work with my friend on this? • Can I get help on this from my mum, dad, brother, sister, tutor? • How many people need to contribute to this project? • What is the role of each member of the group? • What should the outcome of my work look like? • How long should this take (for each member of the group)?

What is plagiarism and how to avoid it?

The International Baccalaureate Organisation defines plagiarism as “the representation, intentionally or unwittingly, of the ideas, words or work of another person without proper, clear and explicit acknowledgment” (2014, p. 2). Plagiarism can come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and to all sorts of degrees, from copying word for word an entire essay, to simply forgetting to add quotation marks and citation to something

someone else said. Our research has found lots of terms for the different sorts of plagiarism that are possible: direct, mosaic, mashup, paraphrasing, self and snip plagiarism as well as fraudulent and inflated bibliographies to make work appear more credible than it really is (turnitin.com, 2016). While it is possible to write at length about each of these, a quick Google search would allow you to read more about each, but that is not the scope of this article.

More important is to emphasise that students should not be concerned about plagiarism as long as they complete their work with integrity. As long as any idea that is not your own is credited, the format of that credit is less important (until students reach university) and teachers The committee has worked on constructing a notice board highlighting key aspects of academic integrity to the student population and writing the following article highlighting two very important aspects of it.

can work with students at an age appropriate level on how to appropriately add citations in their work.

Acting with integrity can be hard. Students will need to call on their passion, resourcefulness and resilience in order to do so at all times, and resist the temptations that different pressures may present. Discussing these temptations, raising awareness of them and considering how to navigate them with a principled moral compass is essential. Not only does this form an important part of the Academic Integrity Curriculum at school, but is also a valuable conversation to be having at home.

Bibliography

- International Baccalaureate

Organisation, 2014. Academic

Honesty in the Diploma Programme,

Geneva: IBO. - turnitin.com, 2016. The Plagiarism

Spectrum: Instructor Insights into the 10 Types of Plagiarism, s.l.: turnitin. com.