When we talk about academic integrity, I think it's really important to bare in
mind that we're all part of an academic community and within that academic
community, we are sharing and developing new ideas but we don't always just do
that based on what we know or what we think we know. So you'll be learning
things in your sessions, you'll be learning things with your tutors, you'll
be questioning and challenging ideas and theories all the time - but those will be
the ideas and theories usually of other people. So the importance of academic
integrity is about you building your knowledge and understanding based on
referencing and giving the appropriate accolade to those people who first of
or came up with those ideas. I remember when I got my first assignment and it
was for a critical theory module and so that's quite intense, as you can imagine,
looking at all these different ideas. Initially I did struggle with different
theoretical frameworks - I didn't understand how I could sort of use that
in my own writing, it was just beyond me, coming fresh from A levels and so I did
struggle and I had various meetings with my tutor. But she assured me that, you
know, be confident in your voice - you have a voice and that needs to come
through in your writing. And that's a piece of advice that really stuck out to
me and it helped me to refine my arguments and to really find okay what's
my angle of this theme, what's my angle of this issue, how can I use other
people's ideas to frame my own arguments. The whole concept of academic integrity
can seem quite daunting at first, can be quite complicated for, particularly
for new students but in fact it's quite straightforward and it's principles
have been at the heart of research and university life, probably for hundreds of
years. Using secondary sources is a crucial part of university essays and
assignments, so it's really important that you use writing from other people
so other critics, academics, philosophers, people in the field to back
up your points. You can't state something without having any evidence so even if
it's loosely connected it's best to use the critic or the textbook or the
journal article and then that will enable you to develop on that,
so you might contradict it, you might argue against it or you might actually
argue in favour for it. The ultimate aim of a science student should be becoming
a successful scientist and if you if you wanted to become a successful
scientist then, all the successful scientists they use other people's work
they use other people's information but that is not a sin, it's a good practice
they are not only justifying their scientific invention but also giving the
credit and they're giving the acknowledgement to the other
scientists or other people who have contributed or they have borrowed
information from. The accounting profession is it has its own
professional identity and it has got lots of competencies around it, part of
which are professional identity and integrity and part of that is students
being able to articulate their discipline. And they can only do that if
they've delved into the subject matter, they've researched it, they've looked at
different perspectives, they've critically analysed and taken what
other people have done and taken other research and pulled it apart and made
sense of it, in their own way and in their to reflect their understanding and
that's where it's important for them to have their academic voice. Referencing is
not as scary as it seems at first. Most students get really intimidated by
referencing and they really really worry about, you know, getting caught cheating
or getting accused of cheating or missing off a reference and being told
that they've copied something and referencing is fiddly I'm not going to
deny that but it's not as difficult as people think at first. There's a lot of
guidance there's a lot of help available, the library has subject librarians, study
skills teams, so if students are really really struggling with referencing or
even if they just want someone to help them get started - come and ask for help.