Promoting good academic practice
Quality Teaching | Meaningful Learning
Academic Integrity and Misconduct for Students
This Academic Integrity and Misconduct for Students (AIMS) resource uses an adaptation of team-based learning (TBL) to help members of academic staff, when working with students to understand how to develop sound academic practices, promote academic integrity and avoid practices that amount to academic misconduct. It is designed to help module tutors to meet their responsibility under the Academic Integrity and Misconduct Policy to ensure that students are given explicit guidance with respect to the current Policy at both Programme and Module Level.
What are the benefits of using the AIMS resource?
The benefits of using this resource and of adopting a TBL approach are considered to be as follows:
- It encourages students to understand how to develop good academic practice for themselves.
- It highlights some of the pitfalls that students can fall in to when working on assessed work.
- It is designed to help prevent them from committing academic misconduct.
- It supports a blended learning approach.
- It helps students build friendships with their peers by working together in teams early on in their time at University, but where no academic credit is at stake.
- It provides a clearer understanding of what sources of support are available to students when they face situations that would typically result in poor academic practice or academic misconduct.
- The Readiness Assurance Process (quiz) can be facilitated either using scratch-cards (available from Learning Development), or via NILE.
- Although designed for use by students at Level 4, it could also be used for Top-Up students or as a refresher for students in second and third year.
How does Team-Based Learning work?
The TBL approach is widely used when application of the topic content to scenarios is as important as understanding that content in the first place. There are 3 distinct parts of the TBL process:
- Preparation
- The Readiness Assurance Process (RAP)
- Application Scenarios focusing on Key Concepts
For the purposes of AIMS, these 3 parts of the process have been simplified (Figure 1) as the full TBL approach is not needed here.
Figure 1: The AIMS Team-Based Learning Sequence
Accessible version of Team Based Learning Sequence diagram – Voiceover (mp4)
Why do we need an AIMS resource?
The resource has been designed to be used in face-to-face situations, as this will also help new students to get to know fellow students on their programme, especially if used in first year. However, it is possible for you to conduct the quizzes using NILE. Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages which are detailed and explained fully in the staff introduction. The entire resource is able to be downloaded and imported straight into your NILE site, where you will find detailed, step-by-step instructions for staff and for students, along with the quizzes, the answers, the scenarios and all other resources that you will need. The only thing you will need to collect is a set of scratch-cards for the team quiz from the Learning Development Team.
The AIMS Resource
View the list of the component parts of the AIMS Resource together with instructions on what you need to do next in order to use it with your students.
Although the resource was designed primarily to be used in class with students, in a very low-tech way (i.e. on paper), it is possible to run the Readiness Assurance quiz within NILE. If you wish to use NILE, please email the Learning Technology Team in the first instance.
List of component parts of the AIMS resource:
- Student Preparation and Background Reading (make available in NILE)
- The Readiness Assurance Quiz Questions (1 paper copy per team OR conducted in NILE)
- The Readiness Assurance Quiz Answers (stored in NILE, but do NOT make available to students)
- TBL Scratch-cards (1 per team OR not necessary if conducted in NILE)
- Application Scenarios (Powerpoint slides for use in a F2F context. Stored on NILE, but do NOT make available to students)
- 1-5 display cards (1 per group, print on card and laminate if you want to reuse!)
When you have decided whether you want to run your session with or without technology, follow the relevant set of instructions below. Both options still require an hour of class time.
Please note that Option 2 – which uses technology for the quiz part of the process – is more complicated to set up and also removes the option for students for confidence marking as they are either right or wrong. By contrast, the scratch-cards allow students to get different points depending on whether or not they get the answer right on their first, second or third attempt.
Option 1: Low-tech version
- Check that no-one else running a module in your programme has run this activity.
- Download the Instructions for installing AIMS into your NILE site.
- Make the basic student facing instructions and the core preparatory reading available in NILE to students a week before you want to run the session.
- Print off the following:
- one copy of the quiz per student
- one set of the Simultaneous Reporting cards per team – on card (ideally) and laminate if you want to reuse them.
One set of cards per team. Ideally, teams should comprise no more than 6-8 students
Option 2: Online Group Quiz and Application Scenarios
(more complicated option)
- Check that no-one else running a module in your programme has run this activity.
- Download the Instructions for installing AIMS into your NILE site.
- Make the basic student facing instructions and the core preparatory reading available to students a week before you want to run the quiz.
- Set up the quiz in NILE, using the settings provided by the LearnTech team. Do not make the quiz available until you are ready to run it. You should ONLY release the quiz to students during the session. The quiz should take about 20 minutes.
- Print off the following:
- one copy of the quiz per team (6-8 students per team)
- one appeal sheet per team
- one set of the Simultaneous Reporting cards per team – on card (ideally) and laminate if you want to reuse them. One set of cards per team. Ideally, teams should comprise no more than 6-8 students
- Collect the Scratch-cards from Learning Development (one per team)
- You can store the Application Scenarios in NILE, but DO NOT make them available to students otherwise they will see the answers!