When is the Academic Integrity Test scheduled downtime?
The Academic Integrity Test will be unavailable from 29 July – 7 September.
What do I need to do before the test becomes unavailable?
All students who have not yet completed the test must do so before 22 July 2022.
All relevant academic staff should check that students have completed the test and remind them to do so before 22 July 2022.
Any student who has not completed the test before 22 July 2022 and attempts to take it between 22 and 29 July may find the test is unavailable or that their results are not retained in the system during the switch-off, so they will have to take the test again.
The new test will become available on 8 September 22. All incoming new students, and any student who has not taken the current test before 22 July, will need to take the new test. Existing students who have taken and passed the current test will not need to retake the new version.
Why is the Academic Integrity Test being updated?
The University of Bath is committed to providing students with the tools to become ethical scholars, researchers, and future professionals. As a signatory of the QAA Academic Integrity Charter, the University expects all its students to commit to, and maintain, high standards of academic honesty and integrity, respecting and identifying others’ ideas and materials in all their work.
To ensure standards of teaching and research provision are maintained, the University has updated the Academic Integrity Test to facilitate students’ understanding of ethical studying and assessment conduct. The updated test provides critical guidance for students to help them avoid assessment offences, respect intellectual property rights, develop the necessary skills to reference appropriately when preparing assignments, and avoid being incited to cheat by study sites and essay mills.
What is changing in the Academic Integrity Test?
The updated test contains a range of authentic scenarios about assessment expectations and assessment offences as well as detailed feedback. It is designed to provide an engaging and informative method of educating students arriving in or returning to higher education. Key areas covered in the new test include those that have been of particular interest to staff and students across the sector, such as the distinctions between collusion and collaboration, types of e-cheating offences, the illegality of essay mills, and the incitement of students to cheat by subscription-based and free study sites.
Professor Cassie Wilson, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Student Experience) said: “Our staff and students take academic integrity very seriously. Our students have been instrumental in campaigning for improvements to the integrity test, as well as contributing to the updates to our current provision of both the Academic Integrity Test and accompanying training. By revamping the integrity test to align with the up-to-date learning resources introduced in 2019, we are providing all of our students with fit for purpose education on academic integrity to help them understand and avoid assessment offences.”
The new Academic Integrity Test provides a comprehensive understanding of good academic practice and a safe space for students to check and develop their knowledge during the first year of their studies.
Who needs to take the new Academic Integrity Test?
New students at all levels of study, whether undergraduate, Master's, or doctoral, must take and satisfactorily pass (85%) the compulsory University of Bath Academic Integrity Initiative Test. Students must take and pass the test before the first progression point in their studies, or as advised by their department.
Current students at all levels of study who have not taken or not passed the current Academic Integrity Test before 22 July 22 will need to take the updated test when it becomes available in late August.
Students who have already taken and passed the academic integrity course before 22 July 22 will not need to retake the updated test.
Access to the required test is via the Academic Integrity Initiative Training and Test (AITT) on Moodle.
For all students, at all levels, claims of inadvertence or ignorance before or after taking the Academic Integrity Test will not be accepted as a basis for mitigation of a penalty.
What else do I need to know?
The test is the most recent part of the University’s Academic Integrity Training and Test package to be enhanced, with new online academic integrity learning resources introduced in 2019 to support students with taking the test and throughout their University careers.
The Academic Integrity Training
Alongside the test, students are provided with access via single sign-on to two digital resources to help them understand and apply academic integrity during their studies. These digital resources are:
- Skills for Study – a toolkit that delivers three interactive e-learning study skills modules designed to help every student better understand and practice the fundamentals of academic integrity. These are Referencing and Understanding Plagiarism, Critical Thinking, and Reading and Note-making. In each module, students are able to self-assess their knowledge, work through all or only the relevant content, bookmark materials to review again in future, keep a reflective log on their own learning, and take practice tests. These resources are available to use over and over again throughout their University career.
- Cite Them Right - a referencing database available 24/7/365 to help students give proper credit to any source used within their work. An additional Referencing Tutorial for those new to referencing is also available and a certificate of achievement from Palgrave Macmillan may be acquired by successfully completing the tutorial’s built-in assessments.
In addition to these digital resources, students are also able to access support for all aspects of their studies from the following services: