Academic honesty and plagiarism

International students have a significant risk of unintentionally plagiarising or failing to comply with academic honesty expectations.

• Consider spending class time discussing the specific risks of plagiarism in the given assignment and reasons why it is not acceptable.
• Confirm that students are aware of how to reference appropriately.
• Discuss openly the risks of dishonesty for international students including difficulties in appropriate paraphrasing and the importance of independent thought.
• Designing assignments against plagiarism includes asking students to evaluate and analyse rather than describe events/theories.

Why

Academic honesty is a key value at University of Sydney. Adopting this value and learning to act accordingly is a process students require support in.

International students may have more complicated journey learning about academic honesty based on their diverse educational history.

Examples

• Role-modelling good referencing practice in lecture notes and slides can provide a method of sharing the value of academic honesty.
• Consider inviting the library liaison to help with teaching students about research and referencing.
• Consider using examples from previous cohorts to show how appropriate referencing helped the students to gain better marks.

Further resources

• Explain how to deal with referencing - you might refer students to the library or provide them with your own guides.
• Library liaisons are usually happy to come and talk to your students about research and referencing.
• Academic honesty and other information skills: the Library has information for students on developing information skills, including about academic honesty.