Academic integrity

Academic integrity means demonstrating honest, moral behaviours when producing academic work. This involves acknowledging the work of others, giving appropriate credit to others where their ideas are presented as part of your work and the importance of producing work in your own voice. Contributions by artificial intelligence (AI) tools must be properly acknowledged. As part of a learning community, students share ideas and develop new ones – you need to be able to interpret and present other people's ideas and combine these with your own when producing work. To achieve this, students will be supported to develop skills of reflection and self-awareness about topics such as fairness, responsibility and respect in academic practice.

Academic integrity includes a variety of elements including:

• honesty – being truthful about which ideas are their own and which come from others and about the approaches, processes and results of their work.
• trust – the ability to rely on the truth of someone or something is a fundamental pillar of academic pursuit and an essential foundation of academic work.
• fairness – not trying to gain an advantage by unfair means for instance by passing off the work of others as their own.
• responsibility – taking an active role in their own learning.
• respect – for the work of fellow students, teachers and other academics and educators.
• courage – being courageous means acting in accordance with one’s beliefs. Students who exhibit courage hold themselves and their fellow learners to the highest standards of academic integrity even when doing so involves risk of negative consequences, such as a bad grade, or retaliation from their peers or others.

FutureLearn recognises that there is a difference between academic misconduct and poor academic practice. Poor academic practice involves minor breaches of discipline-specific citation and/or referencing conventions that give no discernible academic advantage. Where poor academic practice is identified, the student's work will be marked according to the relevant grade criteria, and the student will be directed to the resources available to help them improve their working methods and academic writing to avoid potential academic misconduct.

Plagiarism (including copying, self-plagiarism and collusion)
Plagiarism is the act of presenting the work of another person (or people) and/or content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) tools as their own without proper acknowledgement. This includes copying the work of another student or other students.

FutureLearn expects students to take responsibility for the security of their work (i.e. with written work, to ensure that other students do not get access to an electronic or hard copy of the work). Failure to keep work secure may allow others to cheat, and could result in an allegation of academic misconduct for students whose work has been copied, particularly if the origin of the work is in doubt.

Self-plagiarism
The act of presenting part or all of the student’s own work that has been previously submitted to meet the requirements of a different assessment, except where the nature of the assessment makes this permissible.

Collusion
The act, by two or more students, of presenting a piece of work jointly without acknowledging the collaboration. This could include permitting or assisting another to present work that has been copied or paraphrased from their own work.

FutureLearn also defines collusion as the act of one student presenting a piece of work as their own independent work when the work was undertaken by a group. With group work, where individual members submit parts of the total assignment, each member of a group must take responsibility for checking the legitimacy of the work submitted in his/her/their name. If even part of the work is found to contain academic misconduct, penalties will normally be imposed on all group members equally.

Cheating in an examination venue
FutureLearn defines cheating in an examination venue as including:

• Taking notes or any unauthorised materials into an examination venue. This includes having notes available in toilets or other areas that may be visited during the examination. If students refuse to comply with instructions if they request to leave the examination venue during the examination (e.g. a toilet visit), this may be considered evidence of attempted academic misconduct.
• Obtaining an advanced copy of a question paper.
• Unauthorised communication during an examination (including via telephone or other electronic media).
• Removing an examination answer book from the examination venue.
• Copying from another candidate.
• Allowing oneself to be impersonated.
• Impersonating another candidate.

Fabricating or falsifying data or using another person’s work without permission

The act of fabricating or falsifying data to include presenting work that has not taken place.

Purchasing or commissioning

The act of attempting to purchase or purchasing work for an assessment, for example from the internet, or attempting to commission, or commissioning someone else to complete an assessment on the student’s behalf.

FutureLearn recognises that students who are new to UK Higher Education may need some time to learn how to acknowledge sources properly. Therefore, it operates a ‘probationary module’ system during which the focus of FutureLearn’s response to signs of plagiarism and/or collusion is to educate students in regard to appropriate academic practice and academic integrity.

This applies to all full-time and part-time students and is defined as the first teaching block on a postgraduate programme.

The procedures for investigating suspected cases of academic misconduct are set out in the Academic Integrity & Misconduct policy.

The penalties for academic misconduct have been determined on the basis of the following principles:

• No student should gain any advantage over another as a result of academic misconduct.
• Where there is evidence of collusion, all students implicated in the case should normally receive the same penalty.
• Where there is evidence of plagiarism or copying group work, all those involved will normally receive the same penalty.

Probationary Modules

First offence of plagiarism	Any/all of the following: ● Marks cap. ● Academic integrity tutorial to be completed. ● Undertake similarity training. ● Consult referencing guidance on Canvas. ● Correct work (de-anonymised) and show it to module examiners for checking of referencing as condition of progression.
First offence of collusion	● Marks cap. ● Academic integrity tutorial to be completed ‘as if for the first time’. ● Independent work on a new attempt at the same assessment (de-anonymised), with module examiners checking that it is the student’s own work, as condition of progression.
Any offence of cheating, false authorship, fabrication	These offences are not treated any differently in a probationary module than in a non-probationary module. These offences should be referred to the Standing Academic Misconduct Investigatory Panel.
Second offence	Plagiarism or Collusion: Formal Warning False authorship: Dealt with under Academic Misconduct Disciplinary Procedures.
Subsequent offences of plagiarism or collusion	Treated as a first offence in line with modules which are not probationary, and so will be referred to an Investigatory Panel with the normal range of penalties available.

Academic Misconduct Disciplinary Procedures for non-probationary modules or where plagiarism or collusion is not found include:

		PGT
Serious cheating	Dishonest breach of assessment regulations where there is sufficient evidence reasonably to infer an intention to gain an unfair or inappropriate advantage. (e.g. notes found with the student or on the student’s body).	0
Cheating/ Serious breach/ Repeated breach	The panel may decide, in their academic judgement, to place the work in the compensable fail range if there is a breach of assessment regulations where an unfair or inappropriate advantage (unintentional or otherwise) could be had or where other students have been disadvantaged by the breach (e.g. a mobile phone ringing during the exam, bringing in one’s own calculator or other data-storage devices, writing on the exam paper before the exam begins).	Marks Cap 49
Breach(Second occurrence)	As below but where a student has already received a formal warning.	Marks Cap 59
Breach (First occurrence)	Breach of assessment regulations where no advantage is apparent. (e.g. unauthorised materials with no perceivable advantage in a pocket or under a table, such as keys or a credit card).	Formal Warning

When a student is informed of the outcome of the Standing Academic Misconduct Investigatory Panel consideration of their case, they must be advised that they have a right to appeal by following the Appeals process. If they are dissatisfied at the end of that process, they may make a complaint to the Office for the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA).

Students may only appeal against decisions of any Panel making decisions under this policy on the grounds that:

• The procedures set out in this Policy were not followed properly.
• The Panel reached a decision that was not reasonable in all the circumstances.
• New evidence is available which could not reasonably have been brought to the attention of the relevant Panel at the time of its investigation.
• There was bias or reasonable perception of bias during the academic misconduct process.
• The penalty imposed by the Standing Academic Misconduct Investigatory Panel was disproportionate or not permitted under this Policy.