Academic integrity and good academic practice
Academic integrity is a commitment to shared values and behaviours including, honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility in your studies and assessments.
Skilful and ethical academic practice is a key part of academic integrity and is about making sure that anybody who reads your work can easily identify your own thoughts and ideas and can separate these from the thoughts and ideas of others. NTU will help you to develop good academic practice skills during your time with us so that you can act with academic integrity.
If you don’t follow good academic practice in your assessments, it might be considered cheating and give you an unfair advantage in your studies. If the University is worried about the academic integrity of any of your assessments we will review what has happened and may
need to take action. This might result in claims of academic misconduct against you. You can find definitions of academic misconduct in our Academic Integrity policy.
Developing good academic practice
We will help you to develop good academic practice skills during your studies.
We have an online course on Plagiarism which we encourage you to do. We also provide support materials and interactive quizzes, or you can book an appointment and ask any questions you might have. We also run workshops that can help you.
We use Turnitin which is an online tool that helps you to check text matches with other documents. When you have written an assessment you can use Turnitin to check your academic practice. You can learn how to do this through our support materials.
You will normally have the chance to do “formative” assessments on your course. These are practice assessments which don’t count towards your final grade. We encourage you to do these assessments as you will get feedback which helps you develop your academic practice skills. With each assessment you complete, your academic practice will improve.
What happens if you don’t show good academic practice?
Making mistakes is an important part of learning, and sometimes you might accidentally show poor academic practice in your assessments. For example, you might not have used quotations correctly, or you might have reproduced an existing idea as your own.
When this happens you will be contacted so that we can explain where you went wrong and put more
support in place for you. You might be asked to look at support materials, attend a course or discuss your work with your personal tutor.
It is important that you engage with this support, so that you don’t repeat these mistakes in any more assessments. If these mistakes are repeated you risk more serious academic misconduct claims.
Academic misconduct
When there is a repeat of poor academic practice, or if there is a large amount of poor academic practice in an assessment, this might be academic misconduct and will be reviewed.
You will be invited to a meeting to discuss the possible academic misconduct. You can give a written statement and/or evidence before the meeting takes place. You can also invite someone to come to the meeting with you for support, such as a friend or someone from the Student’s Union.
During the meeting you can discuss the possible academic misconduct and give any evidence you might have. Notes will be made of the meeting discussions.
After the meeting you will be given an outcome in writing. This will tell you whether the academic misconduct has been confirmed or not, the reasons for this, and what it means for you. For example, if the academic misconduct is confirmed your assessment grade might be limited to a low grade. You can find information about the full range of possible outcomes in our Academic Integrity policy.
You might decide to admit the claims of academic misconduct before the meeting. If so you do not need to go to the meeting. Your admission will be taken into account when considering the potential outcome.
If you are worried about claims of possible academic misconduct you can get support from a support advisor or from the Students’ Union.
Serious academic misconduct
Some academic misconduct is more serious. For example, you might already have had confirmed academic misconduct on an assessment, or we might be concerned about the type or amount of possible misconduct. You can find examples of serious misconduct in our policy.
If we think there is possible serious academic misconduct on one or more of your assessments you will be asked to come to a hearing where a panel of colleagues will review the claims. You can give a written statement and/or evidence before the meeting takes place. You can also invite someone to come to the meeting with you for support, such as a friend or someone from the Student’s Union. You can also invite witnesses if you need to.
It is very important that you attend the hearing so that you can discuss the claims made. We will give you plenty of notice but if you can’t attend you must tell us as soon as possible and give reasons. At the hearing you will be given the chance to discuss the claims and give any evidence you might have. Notes will made of the hearing discussions.
After the hearing the panel will decide an outcome and this will be sent to you in writing. This will tell you whether the serious academic misconduct has been confirmed or not, the reasons for this, and what it means for you. For example, if the serious academic misconduct is confirmed you might not be given credit for the assessment or you might not be able to complete your course.
You might decide to admit the claims of serious academic misconduct before the meeting. If so you do not need to go to the meeting. Your admission will be taken into account when considering the potential outcome.
If you are worried about claims of possible serious academic misconduct you can get support from a support advisor or from the Students’ Union.
Appealing an outcome
If you are given a confirmed misconduct or serious misconduct outcome, you can appeal if you feel that:
1. The University didn’t follow its processes correctly
2. You have new evidence that you couldn’t have given to us earlier
3. The outcome was unreasonable in the circumstances.
You can send in an appeal through our online form. You must do this within a week of getting your outcome or the appeal will be rejected. When you send this in you must tell us the reason for your appeal and give any evidence you have.
Your appeal will be reviewed and will either be accepted or rejected. If the appeal is accepted the outcome will be looked at again, and may be changed (although this doesn’t happen in all cases). You will be told the outcome of your appeal in writing.
If you are unhappy with the outcome of your appeal you can make a complaint to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education within 12 months.