Academic honesty

Group of people talking and looking at a book

Academic honesty is at the heart of studying and working at university. Our students need to understand what it means to be honest in their work so we can make sure that we can maintain reliable standards for our academic awards, and students continue to enjoy studying for academic qualifications that have a good reputation.

Academic honesty for students

At our University we take a formative approach to assisting students to work with academic honesty. University Library modules on academic skills provide students with the opportunity to develop further. Statements on academic honesty are included in module guides, student handbooks and our Academic Honesty Policy.

Further, all students will have the opportunity to undertake a formative assignment before their first written assignment. They will be able to test their work, for the formative assignment for plagiarism through the TurnitinUK text-matching software package.
Students are encouraged to discuss the report with their personal tutor to see where they may need to improve their academic practice. These formative TurnitinUK originality reports will not be viewed as assessment offences. However, some caution is necessary in interpreting the reports since some degree of matching of text, for example, in references or quoted passages, should be expected.

Academic honesty for academics

We have developed an Academic Honesty for Academics Canvas site with a self-directed learning course. Academic colleagues can take this course and bring themselves up to date with good academic practice and how to use Turnitin.

In addition to our own Study Skills Plus and Good Academic Practice resource, there are a number of external resources available to help you help your students to develop academic honesty in their work, and avoid assessment offences:

External resources

Tutorials for students

All the following resources are free to use, subject to the attribution of the original author.

Please notify the author if adding a hyperlink to your website or handouts.

Additional resources