Academic Integrity

This section provides you with all the information about Academic Integrity and why this is crucial for your academic success as a student in UCC.

About Academic Integrity
Plagiarism
Referencing
Paraphrasing

What is Academic Integrity?

Ireland’s National Academic Integrity Network defines academic integrity as "compliance with ethical and professional principles, standards, practices and consistent system of values, that serve as guidance for making decisions and taking actions in education, research and scholarship". UCC adopts this definition in the Academic Integrity for Examinations and Assessments Policy.

What exactly does this mean for you as a student? To break this definition down a bit, academic integrity is understood as behaving in an honest and ethical way in academic settings, doing your own work, and giving credit to others when you use theirs. This means taking pride in and responsibility for your own work and respecting the work of others.

Everyone has a role to play in academic integrity - it is a shared responsibility. As a student, you are responsible for actively engaging in your education by taking advantage of opportunities to learn and develop, asking questions if you don't understand something, and completing your own work honestly so as not to create an unfair advantage or disadvantage for other students. You can expect to be provided with clear and transparent guidelines, policies, rubrics, and expectations for assessments that are applied equitably in order to help you do this.

Ultimately, academic integrity encompasses behaving according to a set of values that are also applicable in your personal and professional lives. These values will help you unlock your potential and set you up for success. There are six fundamental values of academic integrity laid out by the International Center for Academic Integrity – honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage.

For more information on the Academic Integrity values, you can watch this short introduction video below.

Why should I have Academic Integrity?

It is really essential that you understand this - Taking shortcuts by passing off someone else’s work as your own or committing another form of academic misconduct ultimately hurts you, as you will not properly develop the skills you are expected to learn in your course. Of course, you may accidentally make mistakes along the way; this is all part of the learning process, and there are supports in the University to help you. Academic integrity is not something to be feared, but something to strive towards. Putting in the effort to doing your own work, completing assignments, and actively engaging in your classes helps you develop the skills that your qualification confirms you to have, whatever your area of study is. It also establishes you and your work as reputable, reliable, and trustworthy.

Upholding academic integrity is also important in ensuring that students are treated equitably and fairly. Incidents of academic misconduct undermine this by creating an unfair advantage or disadvantage for you as a student. Incidents of academic misconduct have repercussions that may not only impact your marks, but also the validity of your qualification. Equally occurrences of academic misconduct at a larger scale can damage the reputation of the University and its qualifications. This affects the larger academic community as well as yourself.

Learn More

To learn more about academic integrity, skills that support it, various types of academic misconduct to avoid, and expectations and supports at UCC, check out the Academic Integrity Fundamentals Course under the Academic Integrity tab on the Success Zone. This course contains 8 modules and takes approximately 2-3 hours to complete. It is strongly recommended that all students take this course to familiarise themselves with academic integrity, academic misconduct and related topics. This will help you identify the skills you need to succeed and give you the confidence to stand over your own work and take pride in it. You will be issued with a certificate upon completing the course.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is probably the most well-known form of academic misconduct and refers to the presentation of the work or ideas of others as your own – essentially this is stealing someone else’s work, and the effort they have put into it. This is wrong because it appropriates the work of others by not giving them proper credit. To put this into context, imagine how you might feel if you were working in a particular area and someone came to you and presented your work to you or someone else as if it was their own, taking all the credit for it.

Plagiarism can sometimes happen inadvertently if you are confused about citations, or if you forget to add them in. You can prevent plagiarism by putting quotation marks around anything that you directly copy, and adding a citation. It’s important that you remember to do this for anything that you have paraphrased as well. You may have put it in your own words, but the original idea was someone else’s! Don’t forget this applies to things like images and tables as well. Another thing to bear in mind is that you should make sure your entire assignment is not made up of references to other people's work. It is good to incorporate the work of others, but you need to balance this with your own work and ideas.

For more information on Plagiarism, you can watch this short introduction video below.

Another type of plagiarism that is perhaps not as well known is self-plagiarism, or auto-plagiarism. This happens when you reuse your own work without citing where you have previously submitted it. This can occur whether you are reusing an entire piece of your work, tweaking things like the title or some data, or just referring to an element of it. This doesn’t mean that you can’t reuse any element of your prior work, it just means that you need to acknowledge when you do this. You can prevent self-plagiarism by citing yourself and where your work was submitted. However, in most cases you won’t be able to submit an entire piece of work twice, even if you do cite yourself. You can’t get credit twice for doing the same work, but you can refer to elements or ideas of previously submitted work.

Referencing

To avoid inadvertent plagiarism, it is important that you understand when and why you need to cite something, as well as the referencing style you need to use. For more information on referencing, you can watch this short introduction video below.

For more information on correct referencing, you can visit the Cite-Seeing page in your Student Success Zone.

Paraphrasing

For more information on Paraphrasing, you can watch this short introduction video below.

Paraphrasing in basic terms refers to restating someone else's ideas in your own way. Paraphrasing is useful, however, always remember that you still need to cite the originator of the ideas. Understanding how to paraphrase effectively can help you balance your own ideas with the work of others.

Freedom of Information

You have the right to gain access to certain information held by public bodies. This is what Freedom of Information (FOI) means. These public bodies include Government Departments like UCC, the HSE and more. In more understandable terms, the Freedom of Information Act 2014 has a revised Act that was updated on 16 December 2019.

For more information, you can click on the links below.

Sensitive data is normally personal information about a living person. This information, for example, can be concerning your health, race, religion, etc. How sensitive the information is can often depend on the context. The main issue is making sure that someone is not identifiable. For example, if one refers to a 92 year old man in a very small town, it is likely that everyone will know who he is. Steps must be taken to ensure that the information is secure as it is no defense to say that it was an accident.

Right to privacy suggests that an individual has a right to privacy which is guaranteed under Data Protection legislation. Information requested under FOI must not be sensitive or conflict with an individual's right to privacy. Information from UCC such as "financial status of student" must be anonymised.

Use of Generative AI

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technologies are a subset of artificial intelligence (AI) that use models based on patterns learned from large quantities of training data to generate new text, audio, or other media.

A large language model (LLM) is a type of GenAI designed to understand and generate human language. It achieves this by processing and analysing large volumes of text data from diverse sources, such as books, articles, and websites. The model employs complex mathematical algorithms and neural network architectures to learn patterns, relationships, and structures within the language. LLMs often take the form of a chatbot like ChatGPT.

While GenAI can pose a challenge to academic integrity it can also be used responsibly to enhance the learning process where appropriate.

Six Fundamental Values of Academic Integrity

Honesty – The use of GenAI should be acknowledged and made transparent.

Trust - GenAI is known to “hallucinate” and is not a credible source. As we cannot automatically trust that the content it provides us is accurate, we need to critically analyse GenAI outputs before using them.

Fairness - To ensure fairness, clear guidelines for how and when AI technology can and cannot be used (for both students and staff) should be available and applied consistently.

Respect - We respect our own potential by placing value in developing new knowledge and skills and recognising and taking pride in our own contributions. We respect others by being honest and transparent about our use of GenAI.

Responsibility - Individuals are responsible for the work they produce; GenAI cannot take responsibility. This means that individuals using AI-generated content need to analyse it to ensure that it is accurate and unbiased. Critically engaging with AI tools is important.

Courage - It takes courage to learn how to use new and unfamiliar technologies, and to persevere in the responsible use of GenAI tools, staying true to the values of academic integrity.

To find out more about, check out the Responsible Use of Generative AI page.

Academic Integrity for Examinations and Assessments Policy

Academic Integrity is fundamental to the entire mission of the University in learning, teaching, research, public engagement, and public trust. Academic Integrity is a core part of UCC’s values of integrity, respect and accountability as set out in our strategic plan. This policy sets out UCC’s definitions of academic integrity; signposts supports for staff and students; and, outlines the procedures for the investigation of alleged cases of academic misconduct for examinations and assessments.

As students, it is important that you familiarise yourself with this policy and ensure that all of your submitted work meets the standards of academic integrity as outlined by UCC.

You can find the up-to-date policy here: Academic Integrity for Examinations and Assessments Policy.

Academic Integrity