Acting with integrity is at the heart of all Melbourne Polytechnic’s operations. Everyone associated with the Institute is expected to uphold moral and ethical standards in their day-to-day conduct to ensure that decision-making and actions are conducted with integrity and transparency.
(source: Melbourne Polytechnic Academic Integrity Policy)
The Academic Integrity website aims to promote awareness of academic integrity, to provide access to relevant Melbourne Polytechnic policies and procedures, and to highlight support services available to assist with academic integrity compliance.
Click on the links below for more information about the following topics:
Academic integrity is:
‘The expectation that teachers, students, researchers and all members of the academic community act with: honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility.’
Breaching academic integrity is also known as ‘academic misconduct’ or ‘academic dishonesty’.
(source: TEQSA 2022, What is academic integrity? Tertiary Education Quality & Standards Agency)
Essentially, academic integrity is about taking responsibility, and acting honestly, in the preparation and submission of your academic work.
Academic integrity is equally critical in the workplace as failure to submit your own original work, (such as when preparing a report or delivering a business presentation) or acknowledging the work or input of others, could affect your professional reputation and credibility.
As a student, it is your responsibility to support academic integrity by:
Note that the use of contract cheating websites is in breach of Melbourne Polytechnic academic integrity policies.
TEQSA’s definition of contract cheating is: “when students outsource their assessments to a third party, whether that is a commercial provider, current or former student, family member or acquaintance.”
For more information on contract cheating please refer to the TEQSA document What is contract cheating and methods to reduce it.
Contract cheating also includes the use of artificial intelligence tools (such as ChatGPT) that can generate responses to essay and exam questions.
The following behaviours breach (do not support) academic integrity:
The above examples and definitions have been sourced from the TEQSA website. For more information about these behaviours, and detailed definitions of the terms, please refer to the TEQSA resource What is academic integrity?
Watch these short videos from TEQSA about why cheating is never the right answer.
Melbourne Polytechnic has clear and scaffolded actions for investigating suspected breaches of academic integrity. The responses to academic misconduct vary depending on several factors including:
The penalties for suspected breaches of academic integrity include:
Further information about processes, actions and penalties to support and manage breaches of academic misconduct are explained in the Academic Integrity (Students) Procedure (melbournepolytechnic.edu.au).
TEQSA (Tertiary Education Quality & Standards Agency) is the Australian regulatory body that ensures that higher education programs are delivered to high quality standards and support compliance. TEQSA have developed several resources on academic integrity that answer may questions that you have about your obligations as students and teachers.
See TEQSA's Understanding Academic Integrity resource to find out more.
The website also provides answers to frequently asked questions including
For answers to these questions, and more, visit TEQSA’s Understanding Academic Integrity: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) resource.
TEQSA provide Understanding Academic Integrity resources in several languages including English.
Select the links below to access resources in your language:
(source: TEQSA 2022, Understanding academic integrity: translated resources, Tertiary Education Quality & Standards Agency)
Referencing is a series of rules and practices that enable you to correctly acknowledge the work of others which you’ve used to create work of your own.
Referencing is important to ensure that you
Referencing both text-based resources as well as visual and audio sources including videos, music, and images is required to support academic integrity.
You need to reference when you are using text or ideas from sources including
Specific text that needs to be referenced includes
You need to reference when you are using images (photographs, drawings, pictures, graphs) or audio (sound recordings) from sources including
The Melbourne Polytechnic Library has several resources to support students’ understanding of referencing:
The Library has created a citing and referencing tool, called ERNI, which serves as a style guide for referencing at Melbourne Polytechnic.
ERNI provides examples of citing and referencing in both Harvard and APA7 referencing styles. Your teacher will advise you of the referencing style required for your course.
Watch this video to find out more about ERNI or click here to access ERNI.
Students and staff have access to an Academic Integrity Module in Moodle. This module is a comprehensive resource which provides both information and activities to help you understand what academic integrity is and your obligations as students.
In addition to academic integrity concepts, the module contains eight topics including referencing and Turnitin. The module aims to be an educative tool that you can refer back to throughout your studies.
Contact your teacher or lecturer for information on how to access the academic integrity module.
Some courses require students to use Turnitin to support academic integrity and to ensure that assessments submitted by students is their original work and/or correctly references sources of information used to draft their assessment.
What is Turnitin?
Turnitin is text-matching software which matches text-based assessments with internet websites and other students’ work from around the world. It identifies sources of text (eg. quotes) that have been taken from the internet. In addition, the Turnitin database contains over 300 million student papers that have been submitted from students around the globe.
Why is it used?
Turnitin is used by academic staff to check that assessments submitted by students are either their original work or, where information has been taken from other sources, that correct citing and referencing has been used.
How does it work?
How do I access Turnitin?
Your teacher will create a Turnitin link in your course Moodle site if needed.
Can I make changes to my assignment, and resubmit, if needed?
It is at the discretion of your teacher as to whether you can make changes to your assessment and resubmit. For example, if you have realised that you’ve forgotten to add references or a reference list, you may have the opportunity to make these corrections and resubmit your assessment to Turnitin. Your teacher can advise you of this process.
For more detailed information about Turnitin, click here to see the guide on the Library website.
Do you need further help with understanding academic integrity or referencing? Don’t worry, there’s lots of free support and help available!
Individual support
Your teacher or lecturer is always a great place to start if you need help. There are also free services available if you need additional help:
Information guides
The Library has several information guides that can be accessed from the Library’s website at any time.
Academic integrity resources
Academic skills and assessments
Subject guides
Other library guides are also available on subjects that support courses delivered at Melbourne Polytechnic. Go to the Library Guides website to see what guides are available.
Do you have questions or would like further information about academic integrity?
Contact the Melbourne Polytechnic library:
Melbourne Polytechnic’s policies and procedures relating to academic integrity, student discipline and student code of conduct are accessible from several access points including
Links to the relevant policies and procedures are below.
Academic Integrity Policy (policies.melbournepolytechnic.edu.au)
Acting with integrity is at the heart of all Melbourne Polytechnic’s operations. Everyone associated with the Institute is expected to uphold moral and ethical standards in their day-to-day conduct to ensure that decision-making and actions are conducted with integrity and transparency.
The purpose of this policy is to:
Academic Integrity (Students) Procedure (policies.melbournepolytechnic.edu.au)
The purpose of this procedure is to:
Student Discipline Policy (policies.melbournepolytechnic.edu.au)
This policy describes:
This policy should be read in conjunction with the Student Code of Conduct Guidelines (pdf).