Moving forward with educating for Academic Integrity at Western

First will be the Academic Integrity Module, which will replace Epigeum’s ‘Avoiding Plagiarism’ module.  This initiative, currently being piloted in select Summer A units, will be available for all to use by the Autumn session. We encourage all teaching staff to load this module onto your vUWS units and to promote it to your students. Although the AIM is not compulsory next year, it is proposed that it will be as of 2019, so we will be looking for feedback to help us improve this module.

Secondly, we will be holding an ‘Education for Academic Integrity’ week in 2018, with a range of curriculum and also co-curricular activities. It will be a week for celebrate Western’s commitment to Academic Integrity and to our six fundamental values of honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage. More on this to come next year!

Early next year will also see students coming together to develop an Honour Code for Western. This will supplement the current Code of Conduct, and will involve a pledge, or similar, that students will be asked to commit to at the commencement of their study. The Honour Code will help build communication, confidence and trust between students and faculty and to provide links with our community and beyond.

More activities are planned for development, such as student leadership training, developing restorative, educative approaches to Academic Integrity violations and developing professional development modules for faculty focussing on Academic Integrity.

Lastly, a big thank you for all the Educating for Academic Integrity Strategy working group members, and their input into the Symposium held on the 22 November.  The presentations were well received and there is great support for both the idea of educating for academic integrity, and the activities that the groups continue to develop.

Learning Futures.NOW. Issue 3.

-November 2017-