Academic Integrity Policy

PURPOSE

This policy includes the framework and legislative requirements for ensuring the academic integrity of staff and students at Leaders Institute (LI).

SCOPE

All staff and students

PRINCIPLES

LI ensures that:

• this policy is clearly explained during student orientation, staff induction, and professional development activities;
• students complete the academic integrity quiz during orientation and in at least one core introductory unit during their first semester;
• students complete the Checklist to Help Ensure Academic Integrity Form that registers their awareness of this policy. Students must attach the signed Checklist to Help Ensure Academic Integrity Form to every assessment;
• all assessment items except exams are submitted via a Turnitin™ portal on the relevant Moodle™ webpage, unless the Unit Coordinator has approved otherwise;
• students are required to keep copies of all references and drafts of their assessment items and produce them if required by the lecturer or Unit Coordinator;
• the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools must be ethical, transparent, purposeful, and uphold the principles of academic integrity and reference the use accordingly;
• using AI tools to complete assessment or research that is not the person’s original work is academic misconduct, unless the lecturer or supervisor has permitted this in writing;
• a holistic education approach is taken for students in their first semester of enrolment and specific penalties for breach of the policy by students after their first semester of enrolment;
• responses will be prompt, transparent, equitable, and fair;
• penalties will be appropriate and proportionate, considering intentionality;
• confidentiality is maintained by all parties within the constraints of allegation, investigation, and appeal processes.

While this policy outlines penalties for different offences, other factors may also be relevant. The designated decision maker will exercise professional judgement on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes, a more lenient or more severe penalty may be appropriate, depending on the circumstances.

Penalties for staff academic misconduct will take account of the fact that academic staff are expected to have learned ethical conduct earlier during their academic journey.

DEFINITIONS

Academic Integrity: The honest and respectful engagement with learning, teaching, research, and scholarship. It is an essential moral code to be upheld by the academic community inclusive of staff and students. It ensures that academic work is original and authentic and completed only with the assistance allowed.

Academic Misconduct: Behaviour that conflicts with the principles of academic integrity and leads to an unfair advantage. Types of academic misconduct may include plagiarism, contract cheating, examination cheating, duplicate submission, artificial intelligence, text-spinners, techniques to disguise plagairised work, fabrication, impersonation, academic fraud, solicitation, and promoting the breach of academic integrity, collusion, and non-compliance with exam or test instructions/requirements.

TYPES OF ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT

Academic Cheating Service: A service, commercial or otherwise, which assists students or academic staff to complete a substantial part of an assessment task or research project that students or researchers are required to personally undertake. Assignment-writing websites are academic cheating services.

Academic Cheating: Any dishonest actions to gain advantage, such as:

• use of unauthorised assistance, materials, or equipment in undertaking an assessment items or research projects, including use of any academic cheating service;
• being impersonated by another person, or impersonating another student;
• acquisition and/or distribution of any assessment item or assessment item information, or part thereof, not yet released by the Unit Coordinator or Lecturer;
• providing or receiving information that is prejudicial to fair and equitable conduct of any exam, including providing or receiving information about the content of an exam before one or more students have sat the exam;
• tampering, or attempting to tamper with research work, exam papers, unit content, grades, or other student documentation;
• failing to abide by any reasonable instruction or direction issued by a Unit Coordinator, Lecturer, or Tutor in relation to any assessment item or any person supervising a test or exam;
• aiding others in breaching this policy, including but not limited to:
• allowing one or more other students access to any material to be submitted or that has been submitted by a student in relation to an assessment item;
• assisting another student in breaching this policy.

Collusion: Collaborating with two or more students, or a student and any other person(s) on individual (not group work) assessment item with intent to cheat, plagiarise, or engage in academic misconduct.

Contract Cheating: When a student or staff member outsources or allows their assessment or research to be done by a third party whether paid or unpaid. It also includes organising another person to take an exam, or unauthorised use of AI to complete all or part of an assessment item or research project. A third party could include, but is not limited to:

• a commercial service, such as a tutoring company;
• document sharing website;
• unauthorised editing service;
• assessment writing service;
• current or former student of LI;
• current or former staff member of LI;
• family member or friend;
• other individual or service.

Designated Decision-Maker: The person designated to decide in relation to the penalty for a breach of this policy. The person is identified by position, not by name.

Generative Artificial Intelligence Misuse: Unauthorised use of generative artificial intelligence tools, including no or insufficient citation.

Misrepresentation: Making false claims in relation to assessment items or research projects such as:

• submitting an assessment item that was written in whole or in part by another person, although based on the student’s ideas (ghost writing);
• submitting an assessment item that was wholly or substantially copy edited by another person, paid or unpaid, unless approved by the Unit Coordinator and acknowledged by the student;
• overuse of direct quotes, even if appropriately cited, to the extent that the assessment item cannot be considered the work of the student;
• providing references that are not cited in the body of the assessment item and/or that cannot be readily identified with the argument put forward;
• falsifying quotes, data, or analyses used in an assessment item.

Plagiarism: This includes:

• copying word-for-word phrases, sentences or paragraphs without citing the source (verbatim copying);
• copying word-for-word phrases, sentences or paragraphs, changing a few words without citing the source (sham plagiarising);
• paraphrasing phrases, sentences or paragraphs without citing the source (dishonest paraphrasing);
• submitting an item that is the same or substantially the same as that submitted by the student in the same or another unit without permission of the Unit Coordinator and without citing the source (self-plagiarising);
• submitting an item that is the same or substantially the same as that submitted by another student in the unit either in the same or another offer of that unit (recycling);
• submitting an item that is wholly or substantially written by another person, paid or unpaid (contract cheating);
• inadequate, inconsistent, or incorrect citation and/or referencing of sources, close paraphrasing and/or copying where there is no evidence of intent and where the plagiarism is not more than 5% of the text (incidental plagiarism);
• there are generally two levels of plagiarism:

1. Minor plagiarism: Uninformed omission of details which are minor in nature and by themselves are unlikely to alter the student’s overall grade (e.g. omissions of a limited number of referencing details or incorrect referencing details). It is acknowledged that these minor omissions and errors are more likely to occur in the student’s first semester on campus, and therefore, responses should be more educative at that time. Education and rehabilitation are the preferred course of action.
2. Major plagiarism: an attempt to circumvent assessment requirements by drawing on unacknowledged sources in such a way as to improve the grade, strengthen the research project, or publish a piece of work.

Solicitation: When an individual offers, encourages, induces, or advertises for a staff member, student, or other individual to contract, commission, pay, procure, or complete on their behalf, research or assessment tasks and items that are likely to result in their use for the purpose of cheating, misrepresentation, and/or plagiarism.

OTHER ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT

This may include but is not limited to:

• recycling or resubmitting work that has already been assessed or published without prior permission;
• use of recorded lectures (audio and/or visual), PowerPoints, or other class notes in a way that infringes another person’s privacy or intellectual property rights e.g. by publishing or distributing a recording without permission from the Lecturer;
• offering or accepting bribes (money or sexual or other favours) e.g. for admission or for grades or research results;
• fabrication, falsification, and misrepresentation of information, including research data and source material;
• not meeting required research standards, including conducting research without ethics approval, or conducting research in an unethical manner.

DETECTION
Any person may report a complaint of academic misconduct by a student or staff member to the Lecturer, Unit Coordinator, Program Director, or relevant supervisor.

Moral and legal copyright to student assessment or research materials is vested in that person as the author. However, an LI student, by enrolling in an accredited course, provides implied consent to LI to scan assessment submissions through plagiarism detection or other methods.

Students need to submit their assessments via a Turnitin™ portal on the relevant unit Moodle™ shell, after reading and agreeing on the Academic Integrity Checklist. The Unit coordinators and Lecturers must use their academic judgement in checking the assessment, which may include evaluating the writing style, in-text referencing or reference list. The similarity report obtained from the Match Overview panel on Turnitin assessment is used to detect the originality or similarity of the student assessment against previous submissions, archived assessments, professional publications or internet sources. The use of AI such as Chat GPT, in writing assessments must be checked using Turnitin’s AI writing detection tool, and the Unit coordinators and Lecturers need to adopt due diligence and critical judgment when classifying a breach as a minor or major Academic Integrity misconduct

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY BREACHES

LI considers different levels of severity in the breach of academic integrity:

Minor (initial)/Moderate (repeated)

• a requirement for the student to receive counselling or tutoring;
• informal warning
• formal warning recorded on the student’s record;
• the student receives 0% to 50% of the total marks on the assessment item where misconduct was evident;
• the student may be allowed to write an assessment item on a new topic for a change to receive no more than 50% of the total marks on the assessment item where misconduct was evident;
• failure in the entire unit.

Major (intentional), including contract cheating:

• failure in the entire unit;
• suspension for one or two semesters;
• exclusion from LI.

INVESTIGATION AND ALLEGATION

If a Lecturer suspects an academic integrity breach, it must be investigated and classified as a breach or not. In investigating an academic integrity breach, the Lecturer must communicate the alleged breach to the student, discuss the issue, and verify any supporting evidence such as references. The Academic Integrity Checklist may be utilised in cases of academic misconduct. For the discussion, student must be allowed to bring a support person if needed.

LI ensures that:

• no breach is recorded if the student can provide justification for the allegation and the lecturer is satisfied with the meeting outcome,;
• all suspected minor breaches must be handled by the lecturer, providing educational advice and follow-up,;
• all repeated minor breaches (moderate breaches) must be handled by the Unit Coordinator,;
• all repeated moderate breaches and major breaches must be handled by the Program Director.;
• any breaches after graduation are handled by the Vice President Academic (or delegated representative).

Allegations are made only after following the correct academic integrity investigation procedure. The procedure of handing academic integrity breaches is classified based on whether the student is in their first semester of enrolment or not. The procedures are outlined below:

• Procedures for handling academic integrity breaches of students not in their first semester of enrolment are detailed in Figure 1.
• Procedures for handling minor academic integrity breaches of students not in their first semester of enrolment are detailed in Figure 2.
• Procedures for handling moderate and major academic integrity breaches of students not in their first semester of enrolment are detailed in Figure 3.

PROCEDURAL FAIRNESS

LI recognises that there are diverse aggravating and mitigating factors regarding academic integrity. To ensure consistency in the interpretation of plagiarism percentages across units/courses and to mitigate the risk of misinterpretation of Turnitin Similarity Reports, academic staff adhere to a standardised approach to evaluating plagiarism levels. This includes providing clear guidelines or benchmarks for what constitutes minor/moderate or major breaches of academic integrity based on the percentage of similarity detected in the Turnitin Similarity Report. Academic staff also verify legitimate similarities, such as coversheets, reference lists, assessment checklists, or other unit-related materials.

Aggravating factors:

• seriousness of the offence;
• degree of premeditation;
• impact on other students;
• extent to which the offence adversely impacts the assessment process;
• repeat offences;
• extent of assignment involving misconduct.

Mitigating factors:

• first year student;
• offence unintentional or spontaneous;
• role played by the offender if others were involved;
• offender under duress, but not sufficient to constitute a defence;
• degree of remorse or cooperation shown;
• willingness to seek assistance to avoid further offences.

PENALTY

Penalties will be applied only if the student’s academic integrity allegation is verified and assessed after the meeting. Academic staff exercise professional judgement in applying maximum penalties listed in Schedule 1. Sometimes a more lenient or more severe penalty may be appropriate for students, depending on the circumstances. Where the maximum penalty for a breach is failure in one or more units, the penalty should be complemented by education as outlined above. In determining the penalty, consideration should be given to ‘cascading’ effects on course progression and completion.

MANAGEMENT OF STUDENT ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT

Procedures for handling academic integrity breaches of students not in their first semester of enrolment are detailed in Figure 1.

Procedures for handling minor academic integrity breaches of students not in their first semester of enrolment are detailed in Figure 2.

Procedures for handling moderate and major academic integrity breaches of students not in their first semester of enrolment are detailed in Figure 3.

Maximum penalties for student breaches of academic integrity are highlighted in Schedule 1.

COMPLAINTS, GRIEVANCES, AND APPEALS

If a student wishes to appeal the decision, they have the right to follow the Complaints, Grievances and Appeals Policy. The student should provide as much detail as possible in support of their case, including drafts of the work in question.

RESPONSES TO STAFF BREACHES

If academic misconduct by staff is determined, the disciplinary action may follow. Concerns or complaints about a potential breach of this policy and/or the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research should report in writing and in confidence to the Vice President Academic. A failure to report suspected breaches of the Code is also considered a breach;

• complaints made anonymously will be considered, but complainants who wish to remain anonymous will not be provided with details of the process or outcome of any investigation;
• staff and students must not victimise or otherwise subject another person to detrimental action because of that person reporting or being the subject of a suspected breach of the Code.

Governing Board will ensure that the occurrence and nature of misconduct and breaches of academic or research integrity are monitored, and that action is taken to address underlying causes.

Factors taken into consideration may include the extent to which:

• the researcher departed from accepted practice;
• research participants, the wider community, animals, or the environment are, or may have been, affected by the breach;
• there is, or may have been, incorrect information on public record;
• the breach affects the soundness or reliability of the research;
• the level of experience of the researcher is a consideration;
• any institutional failures contributed to the breach;
• any other mitigating or aggravating circumstances occurred.

If academic misconduct by staff is determined by the Responsible Officer, then disciplinary action may follow. If the staff member wishes to appeal the decision, the Staff Grievance Policy should be followed. Penalties for academic misconduct will take into account the fact that academic staff are expected to have learned ethical conduct earlier during their academic journey. Breaches may result in disciplinary action listed in the Code of Conduct Policy.

If academic misconduct by a staff member is determined, then disciplinary action may follow. If the staff member wishes to appeal the decision, the Staff Grievance Policy should be followed.

FIGURE 1 HANDLING ACADEMIC INTEGRITY BREACHES OF STUDENTS IN THEIR FIRST SEMESTER OF ENROLMENT

FIGURE 2 HANDLING MINOR ACADEMIC INTEGRITY BREACHES OF STUDENTS NOT IN THEIR FIRST SEMESTER OF ENROLMENT

FIGURE 3 HANDLING MODERATE AND MAJOR ACADEMIC INTEGRITY BREACHES OF STUDENTS NOT IN THEIR FIRST SEMESTER OF ENROLMENT

SCHEDULE 1 MAXIMUM PENALTIES FOR ACADEMIC BREACHES