Academic Integrity
Our aim is to embed Academic Integrity into the curriculum. The Centre for Education and Student Success (CEdSS) supports staff with regular workshops, resources, guidance and advice.
Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) Charter
In 2020, the University signed up to the QAA Charter on Academic Integrity. This committed us to the Seven Principles: personal responsibility, community approach, working together, empowering staff, autonomy, consistent practice, and empowering students.
Workshops & Support for Schools & Staff
The Learning and Teaching (LT) and Quality Assurance (QA) teams (LTAQ) provide a range of regular workshops about, for example: Academic Integrity and the QAA Charter; Text Matching Software (TurnItIn); Academic Misconduct procedures; Essay Mills; GenAI Policy and Guidance; and the Contract Cheating Checklist.
Support is offered to staff (School Academic Integrity Officers, Programme and Module Leaders) who wish to develop resources, (re-)design assessment or interpret complex cases of plagiarism. Recent projects have included working with staff and student actors to produce academic integrity videos for students; identifying and sharing authentic and personalised assessment exemplars that reduce opportunities for plagiarism; working with QA on disparities in misconduct cases.
London & the South East Academic Integrity Network (LSEAIN)
CEdSS represents the university on this informal network of universities for sharing best practice, discuss topical issues and report on interesting developments and events (such as research and conferences).
Recent topics have included genAI updates, the contract cheating checklist, academic integrity champions, the international day of action, assessment design, running vivas fairly and non-text disciplines.
External Academic Integrity Projects
As part of our academic integrity work, colleagues within CEdSS have been invited to design and share best practice with organizations such as Turnitin.
The work of Professor Earle Abrahamson* (Learning and Teaching Specialist in LT) involves the creation of TurnItIn QuickMark sets and repositioning TurnItIn as software for learning and not simply a space to submit work. In addition, key projects focus on exploring how first year students understand academic writing, plagiarism and collusion. Through a traffic light system, students receive feedback on what good writing is and how this contributes to grade attainment. This has culminated in the development of top tips for academic writing and feedback practices.
Specific examples of the work can be found here:
Six Ways to Reshape Your Feedback and Increase Student Engagement
Leveraging Higher Education Best Practices in the Secondary Classroom
In 2015, Earle was honoured with a Turnitin Global Innovation Award for his resourceful approach in using technology to model good academic writing practice for his students. He is also a regular blogger (see, for example, AI in Higher Education: Bridging the Divide Between Access, Equality, and Opportunity and Generative AI as a Modern Socrates: Why Integrity Begins With Better Questions).