Journal of Academic Writing

Being and Becoming: Addressing Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Issues in Learning Academic Writing through an Academic Integrity Socialisation Process

2024-01-09T09:31:32+00:00

Addressing issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion in academic writing is vital in higher education, especially when considering the lived experiences and education of undergraduates from diverse backgrounds. This paper acknowledges the challenges faced by students unfamiliar with Western academic integrity standards, emphasising the disparities experienced by socioeconomically disadvantaged, racialised, and international students. The paper describes an innovative learner-agentic empowerment approach at a Canadian university designed to enable students from diverse backgrounds to gain the academic, cultural, disciplinary and linguistic capital required to practise academic integrity. Through a mixed-method analysis of 182 undergraduates in a writing support program, we found that students who responded to a reflective prompt on academic integrity at the start of the program wrote substantially more (mean 7050 words) than those who did not respond to the prompt (mean 1692 words) during the month-long program. Qualitative analyses revealed students' unfamiliarity with cultural differences, academic integrity practices, linguistic challenges, and penalty severity. This model suggests the importance of a proactive, learner-agentic approach to facilitate education about academic integrity and to address equity and inclusivity. The study underscores the importance of systemic pedagogical changes, furthering the dialogue on equity, diversity, and inclusion in higher education.

Students on the Frontlines of Academic Integrity in Ireland and Croatia: Who Are They and (Why) Do We Need Them?

2024-05-16T12:10:45+00:00

The standards and guidelines for quality assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG), define, within the standard 1.1, that higher education institutions (HEIs) need to have public internal Quality Assurance (QA) policies that effectively support academic integrity and are battling academic fraud, among other points (ENQA et al., 2015). On a national level (standard 3.6), QA agencies need to assure the integrity of their activities, in that way assuring that the national higher education (HE) systems are reliable, resilient and fit for purpose. When it comes to student involvement in QA, students are becoming increasingly engaged in QA activities as equal partners (ESU, 2020); however, the extent of their involvement in the matters of academic integrity on a national level still varies based on the national legislation and the activities covered by national QA agencies.

Some countries, such as Ireland and Croatia, do involve students in discussions about academic integrity, prevention of academic misconduct, and implementation of different methods to preserve academic values within the curricula. In this paper, we have described the differences between the two mentioned national systems in terms of legislation, practices in preserving academic integrity within the Quality Assurance (QA) of higher education, and students’ reflections based on the information available at the webpages of the respective NUSs (Union of Students in Ireland and Croatian Students’ Council).

In Ireland, the national QA Agency, Quality and Qualifications Ireland, has formed a National Academic Integrity Network (NAIN), and is directly involved in monitoring academic integrity practices and preventing academic misconduct, with the possibility of persecuting said misconduct. NAIN’s members include students who engage through their NUS - Union of Students in Ireland (USI), and who actively contribute to co-creation of policies and practices related to academic integrity. The student members receive appropriate training and are able to train and organise capacity-building activities for other students. The students also organise different activities on their own, to raise awareness on the need for battling academic misconduct such as contract cheating.

In Croatia, the national QA Agency, Agency for Science and Higher Education (ASHE), is monitoring academic integrity through institutional self-assessment reports within internal QA evaluations, while the Law on Students’ Council and Other Students’ Organisations defines the position of students’ ombudspersons at each HEI, independently from the QA system. Students’ ombuds are students who do not receive training, but are able to request institutional reports. They are selected for a period of 1 year by the institutional students’ representation body, and they can help other students in protection of their rights in disciplinary processes.

QQI and ASHE were interviewed as part of this research, and the findings indicate that QQI was much more successful in terms of engaging students in academic integrity-related topics, while ASHE does not have a responsibility to independently work on this topic with students, although they periodically participate in activities related to academic integrity. Students involved in QQI’s NAIN Network are independent and they understand the academic integrity policy well. Both the agencies reiterated the importance of students’ involvement in academic integrity and the need for educating students on these topics within their study cycles. Students who are overall most engaged in academic integrity are already active students’ representatives, which means that additional efforts need to be made in order to ensure all students understand this topic.

References, Paraphrases and Quotations: Essentials for Writing a Non-plagiarized Text

2024-04-29T10:10:08+00:00

This article examines how four students in high school or college choose to integrate sources in their assignments using quotation and paraphrases. Implementing an innovative methodology, a digital screen capture software was used to record all the participants’ actions as they wrote a 500-word argumentative essay. A video of each participant’s actions was produced. These actions translated as quantitative results and showed the frequency of various actions grouped within five categories of strategies linked to various skills (informational skills, writing skills, referencing skills, basic computer skills and task compliance skills) and a sixth category linked to plagiarism actions. The four texts were also analysed for their quality and their level of plagiarism.

Results show that the college students performed better on overall text quality, but their texts contained more plagiarism. When looking at the strategies used, all students spent more time on their informational and writing strategies than on their referencing strategies. When using sources, in general, participants had more difficulties with paraphrasing than with quoting, often not referencing their paraphrases, which resulted in plagiarism. Patterns emerged for the data showing four types of actions when integrating sources in assignments: the casual integrator, the aspiring integrator, the fearless integrator and the ethical integrator. For each profile, recommendations on how to better develop students’ paraphrasing, quoting, and referencing skills are provided.

Is Peer Review Fit for Purpose? Enhancing Integrity and Professional Standards in Publications

2024-05-17T17:21:58+00:00

Peer review is crucial for academic research, when checking manuscripts for publishing, considering proposals for research funding, and deciding which submitted contributions to include in conference programmes. Peer reviewers are tasked with assessing readability, scientific merit, accuracy, reliability, novelty, relevance, completeness and focus. Conscientious, experienced peer reviewers add considerable value to scientific manuscripts by working with authors, especially Early Career Researchers (ECRs), to help them achieve the required standards set by editors and publishers.

Given the centrality of peer review to academia, it is easy to forget that peer review is often voluntary and unpaid, requiring considerable time and resources. Without peer reviewers, editors and publishers, and conference organisers, many of whom are also voluntary and unpaid, would be tasked with reviewing submissions. This would require considerable time and diverse knowledge and skills, even when the scope of topics for submissions is narrow.

The recent substantial rise in the number of journal article retractions, affecting both large and small publishers, raises questions about why the traditional checks and balances put in place by the publishers, especially peer review, do not uncover the problems.

This paper will explore both the merits of effective peer review and root causes of problems currently being experienced, with consideration of how peer review could be improved to serve future requirements.

Teaching Academic Writing Skills: A Narrative Literature Review of Unifying Academic Values through Academic Integrity

2024-08-29T09:59:16+00:00

Academic integrity continues to concern educators worldwide. Furthermore, general guidelines for ensuring academic integrity do not seem to encompass all the angles that are required to be taken into consideration when exploring the factors that contribute to multicultural students’ decision to adhere to the norms and values of academic integrity. This literature review focuses on how academic values can be unified through academic integrity, and specifically explores factors and perspectives of utilising academic integrity to unify academic values when teaching academic writing. The dimensions of academic values explored in this paper are: a) beliefs and attitudes of multicultural undergraduate students and the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), b) the value of academic performance in academic writing classes, c) exploring the development of multicultural students’ authorial voice while maintaining academic integrity, and d) using technology to encourage academic integrity in academic writing classes. Over 56 identified sources were chosen carefully to ensure unbiased approaches to the issues of academic integrity and development of academic writing skills. The authors explored the issues from a variety of perspectives. The gap noticed in the review of literature is the disconnection between academic values and academic integrity. The authors make recommendations for future research.

Developing Policies to Address Historic Contract Cheating and Misuse of Generative Artificial Intelligence

2024-09-10T11:57:51+00:00

When students submit written assignments for assessment, they are generally trusted to have completed these honestly, and to have benefitted from the opportunity to learn. Academic integrity breaches are sometimes detected during the assessment process. Some common examples of integrity breaches during students’ academic writing include contract cheating, the unauthorised use of GenAI technology for completing assignments, and using AI tools to disguise existing work so that it appears to be original. None of these are new phenomena. Processes and procedures should be in place for managing suspected academic misconduct cases detected during the assessment process. But what happens when academic misconduct is detected retrospectively, sometimes after a student has moved degree programmes or graduated?

This position paper sets out the case for universities and other academic institutions having procedures in place to deal with historic academic misconduct. It provides examples of how institutions can become aware of misconduct, including through whistleblowing and through development of more effective detection software. The authors bring together legal and educational expertise to suggest considerations that individual institutions should make towards future policy development. The discussion considers that students must be supported and prepared for success, but that institutions cannot ignore the reputational risks associated with cases of historic misconduct.

Generative AI for Academic Writing: Case Studies Beyond Simple Chatbot Interactions

2024-03-05T08:10:05+00:00

This teaching practice paper shows how students may choose to work with ChatGPT, generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) to produce essays and written assessment solutions in a manner that may be considered as either acceptable or as a breach of academic integrity depending on individual and institutional views. Following a brief introduction to how chatbots work, case study examples show how modified prompts can be used to generate writing in alternative styles, how a writing tutor review can be simulated, and how LLMs can be run locally and without Internet access. The paper is intended to inform academic writing tutors, instructors, and assessors what is possible using generative AI for writing as of January 2024. It is not positioned to make a judgement regarding what is acceptable, but rather to illustrate how technically proficient users can accomplish more than is often indicated by writing beginner level prompts for a chatbot. Such techniques are accessible to many students and the Academic Writing Development community will need to consider its response.

Encouraging Dialogue on Academic Integrity: A Scenario-Based Approach

2024-04-14T07:48:23+00:00

This paper recommends that explicit value be placed on promoting dialogue among staff and students with respect to academic integrity in higher education. A detailed literature review revealed a notable lack of literature on resources and practices for professional development of staff on academic integrity or the importance of engaging academic staff in such training. Through the authors’ experience in developing and facilitating workshops, they have designed a flexible approach to academic integrity professional development for academic staff that highlights the importance of discussion and communication. Throughout this workshop development, scenarios were created to prompt discussion on a wide range of academic integrity issues (including Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI)). In total, 18 workshops addressing academic integrity have been run by the authors and attended by 180 staff and 85 students at local, national, and international levels. This experience-based paper situates the need for professional development on academic integrity within the current literature and shares the evolution of the authors’ training workshops and resource development. Readers are encouraged to use the resources in their own contexts to prompt dialogue within their institutions on academic integrity.

On Research Integrity within Science Training

2024-05-16T12:11:13+00:00

Here we report a teaching practice exploring integrity issues related to the use of images in scientific and/or academic writing or, more broadly, in communication. The practice is intended to raise students’ awareness of the need of complying with research integrity principles/norms. It is targeted at undergraduate students in the molecular biosciences, more specifically, to students enrolled in a First Degree in Biochemistry course. It has been implemented in the context of a course unit in which the students perform laboratory work – within a small project – usually originating data that is reported as graphs or as pictures in their laboratory reports. These visual representations are also normally used in articles published in scientific peer-reviewed journals. We implemented a group assignment based on the analysis of guidelines of different journals regarding the preparation of figures, including acceptable image processing and manipulation, as well as on the application of these guidelines on both written and oral reports. We could observe that the students performed the proposed activity with commitment and interest in the aspects explored. Moreover, the exercise improved their critical thinking ability as demonstrated through in-class discussions. In the present work, we discuss challenges of including illustrations in scientific texts in view of science teaching.

Editorial and Production Credits (Vol. 15 No. S1 2025)

2025-01-07T10:02:03+00:00

Editorial: Academic integrity and Academic Writing: Education and Research in a Changing World

2024-09-12T08:52:41+00:00