What I've learned from Rewriting our Academic Honesty Policy (part 1)

I have given up on #28daysofwriting.  It isn't that I haven't been writing.  It is just that I haven't been writing here.  I have been trying to rewrite the school academic honesty policy while at Gladstone's Library in Flintshire.  I am quite amazed that I have spent at least 2 hours a day on it.  Sometimes much more.  I suppose I shouldn't beat myself up for not writing here then.  However, what I haven't done is reflect, as I promised, on my teaching of key words nor on anything to do with the Human Library project.

So here I go with what I've learned from re-writing the academic honesty policy!

I had thought that it would turn out to be much simpler to rewrite than it has.  The parts that needed to be removed since they weren't really policy were really easy to spot.  Why do we need to describe what Wikipedia is and how it can be used in research and how it shouldn't.  This isn't really policy.  And there is a lot more like that, relating to citation creators and library online databases.  So I have put lots of crosses through pages of the present document.

However, I then looked for a workable, easy to understand definition of academic honesty within our present documents.  There wasn't one.  In the high school document, I got to page 7 before I found a list of different types of plagiarism: the ghost writer, the photocopier, the potluck paper writer, the poor disguiser.  You know the sort of thing, or at least you will if you are a teacher or librarian these days.  If I were a student, I would never have gotten to page 7 to read this.  I would have given up somewhere around the discussion of the IB Position Paper October 2012, on page 3.  The MYP document wasn't much better.  Furthermore, neither were written for their largest audience - the students.  They especially weren't written for students for whom English is another language.

Thus, a project which I thought would be more copy and paste with a few adjustments, has turned into a major rethink.  I had hoped to have this finished by the end of February but I now think that it will take all the allotted time given to it and I may be lucky to have it finished by the end of April.

I started by reading a number of similar documents from other schools and decided to write the definition in a way that students could easily understand it.  I described what academic honesty and  dishonesty would look like, giving examples.  I have to thank The Canadian International School in Hong Kong (or was it Singapore) for the structure and ideas.

Academic Honesty is demonstrated when:

• You create authentic work, based on your own ideas and words
• You respect the intellectual property rights of others by giving accurate credit to the sources used in your work
• You show that you understand the difference between collaboration and collusion
• You adhere to the designated rules for all assessments, including external exams

Academic Dishonesty occurs when:

• You intentionally or unintentionally, represent the ideas, words or work of another person as your own by not giving proper acknowledgment through correct referencing.  You might also use translated materials which are not acknowledged.   Both of these instances are known as plagiarism.
• You collude with another student or students in committing academic misconduct.  An example of this occurs when you allow your work to be copied or submitted for assessment by another person.
• You collaborate in a group, the work is not shared equitably but equal credit is given to all group members. 
• Your conduct in an assessment is dishonest, including during external exams.  This may involve taking unauthorised materials into an exam; behaviour that disrupts the exam or may distract other students; communicating with another student during the exam; and any other specified activities set down by the exam board or school.
• You present your own work to be assessed when it has already been submitted by you for another assignment.

I moved on next to the expectations and responsibilities of each of the stakeholders.  I used the order in our present document and then decided as I wrote this post that it was wrong since it put the students and parents as the last of the groups.  It seems to me that the students should be first and that their section should be written in student friendly language.  So this was/is my attempt at that:

Students will:

• Go through the academic honesty policy with their parents/guardians and teachers.  If they are unsure of any part of the policy, they will ask someone to explain it to them.  This could be a parent/guardian, a teacher, or the librarian.
• Make sure that they understand the rules for all assessments, including tests, quizzes, and exams (e.g. semester, end of year, MAP, GCSEs, MYP and DP).
• Make sure that they know how to reference (cite) their sources and make every effort to do so correctly.  If they are unsure, they will ask for help from someone who does know, such as a teacher, librarian, or parent.
• Use the school’s referencing style (e.g. MLA until grade 11) and the school’s online referencing tool (Noodletools).  If they are unsure of any aspect, they will ask for help from a teacher, or librarian.
• Use online digital and print resources ethically, legally and responsibly.  If they are unsure they will ask for help or advice from a teacher, librarian or parent/guardian.
• Make sure they understand what the teacher expects of them when they are working with a partner or in a group and ask the teacher to explain again if they don’t.