Resources

Scott Fleming and Fiona Jordan discuss ‘Being a Good Scholar ... more than merely not being a bad one’ in LINK 18. They suggest that:

‘Good scholars are … characterised by creative approaches to learning and motivation; as active participants in the creation of knowledge rather than as passive observers of the process of its sharing. There is also a danger that if students are not active and critical participants in their learning, they become mere academic technicians who demonstrate how they can comply with, say, a particular referencing/bibliographic style, or with page layout requirements’.

Look at this and other articles in LINK 18 Academic Integrity.

Thus students joining the academic community of their institution need to become aware of expectations of academic honesty, and practise appropriate academic conventions. The Empire State College, New York, describes the role of integrity in their college as:

‘…. a fundamental value upon which colleges and universities are built. Students, faculty and staff are expected to contribute candid opinions, reviews and assessments of research and other academic exercises that are vital to sustaining the discussion and exchange of ideas. It is this conversation that stimulates intellectual growth and development among the community and its members. For learning and scholarship to thrive, academic communities cannot tolerate acts of academic dishonesty, such as cheating, misrepresentation or plagiarism’ Academic Integrity at the Empire State College website.

Building and ensuring the academic literacy skills and integrity of students is therefore an important feature of student development in higher education. For engaging information on academic literacy see the website of the University of New England, Australia, aimed at education students.

For further information on developing academic literacy skills with students see the Study Skills for Students section of this directory.

As part of building these skills students need to be familiar with the nature of plagiarism and the importance of academic honesty. For further information on plagiarism see the Plagiarism entry in this directory.

There is a strong argument therefore for promoting the importance of good scholarship and academic integrity to students (for example, see LINK 18, above) and for "designing out" the opportunity for plagiarism within programmes (for example, see the ASKe leaflet on reducing the risk of plagiarism).

The University of Nottingham website includes resources for students including tutorials on both academic integrity and plagiarism.

For information on how to develop the research skills of students see the Research Skill Development website at the University of Adelaide and in particular their RSD Handbook which can be downloaded from the site.

The Academy JISC Academic Integrity Service has produced the publication Supporting Academic Integrity: Approaches and Resources for Higher Education, a guide designed to provide ‘a bird's-eye view': to pull together key institutional approaches and resources that have been developed since 2000. It provides a valuable up-to-date selection of these, encouraging the sharing of best practice in the area of academic integrity. The Academy JISC Academic Integrity Service has also published Policy Works: Recommendations for reviewing policy to manage unacceptable academic practice in higher education which sets out 12 policy recommendations to discourage and deal with plagiarism in HE.

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