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Academic Integrity Guidelines

UCD School of Archaeology

Academic Integrity guidelines and Academic Misconduct Protocol

 Purpose of this Protocol

This page is to help you complete your assessments at UCD School of Archaeology in the expected manner. Our aim below is to support you in accessing the appropriate resources and guidance to ensure your work is conducted with academic integrity in mind. The purpose of this page is to help you engage in assessments to the best of your ability and to avoid activities that may be deemed academic misconduct. Our aim in the School of Archaeology is not to catch you out for misconduct but to support you in learning appropriate practices to avoid breaching regulations.

As a student of our School, you should familiarise yourself with the meaning of Academic Integrity, the risks of Academic Misconduct and how these relate to the writing and submission of assessments at UCD School of Archaeology. We encourage current students to familiarise themselves with these terms, the underlying concepts and how they may be relevant to you during your studies with us. Navigating the best path to maintaining academic integrity in your assessments is in practice relatively straightforward and will align with many of your own experiences in assessments to date. If you have concerns or questions about anything you read below, please reach out to our Academic Integrity Advisor, Associate Professor Barry Molloy. 

To assist you, we present below our Academic Integrity Protocol for UCD School of Archaeology. It is aligned with the UCD Academic Integrity Policy and the UCD Student Academic Misconduct Procedure. Our aim is to support you in maintaining ethical academic practices in the research, writing and submission of assessed work. To help with this, we will draw your attention to the concept of academic integrity and to guide you, we provide advice on how to avoid accidentally or intentionally breaching academic integrity regulations and inform you about what will happen if your work is suspected of academic misconduct. 

Introduction

At its very simplest, Academic Integrity means being fair and honest in your academic endeavours, ensuring that you submit work that is your own, not claiming credit for work that was produced by others, and acknowledging where information you use in your writing comes from. We share UCD's SECCA (Student Complaints, Student Conduct, Assessment Appeals and Student Appeals) view that “working independently, expressing original ideas, and appropriately acknowledging the ideas of others” are important practices, skills and behaviour that will help you to flourish during your time in UCD and beyond. Academic misconduct, including plagiarism, on the other hand, is academic theft and is taken very seriously. Academic misconduct is a breach of UCD’s Student Engagement, Conduct, Complaints and Appeals (SECCA) (opens in a new window)Student Code of Conduct and UCD Academic Regulations. The penalties for it may be severe, as outlined in UCD’s Student Academic Misconduct Procedure.

If a module coordinator has concerns about academic misconduct in your assessment, you may be referred to the School’s Academic Integrity panel for evidenced and substantial cases of Academic Misconduct. At the very least, if plagiarism is found to have taken place, or other forms of academic misconduct have occurred, such as the unauthorised use of generative AI tools or the inclusion of AI-generated content/text where explicitly prohibited by a module coordinator, you will receive grade penalties or you may be referred without decision at School level to the Student Discipline Procedure, which deals with incidents at a higher level than the School.

It is crucially important, then, that you take the time to read this document and related policies so you understand what is meant by academic integrity and academic misconduct, what plagiarism is, and what is involved if a Module Coordinator suspects your work shows evidence of academic misconduct.

Please note that throughout this protocol, academic misconduct comprises different types of plagiarism, including the inappropriate and unacknowledged use of generative AI (such as Chat GPT, for instance) to generate content for your assignments.  The colours below refer to the “Traffic Light” system used at UCD. You will find details of the traffic light system on a module-by-module basis in each module handbook and on Brightspace. A Green light means that you may use generative AI but always within academic integrity guidelines. An Amber light means that you may use generative AI for certain purposes only and solely for the specific assessment, following the specific guidance of our module coordinator and within academic integrity guidelines. A Red light means you must not use generative AI for any purpose in a specific assessment. A Red light may also be signalled for an entire module. For the avoidance of doubt, if no light is indicated, the default of the School of Archaeology is the Red light – you must not use generative AI for assignments. While Green means you may use it within specified limits, Amber means check carefully the manner in which you are allowed to use generative AI. Always consult your module coordinator if you are not clear on what is expected of you. For further information, we direct you to the Traffic Light System used by UCD College of Arts and Humanities, which is the same policy as used at UCD School of Archaeology. This has been designed to help you maintain ethical academic practices in your submitted work. Please familiarise yourself with it.

We encourage you to familiarise yourself with what Academic Integrity and the risks of Academic Misconduct mean in practice at UCD to assist you in proactively avoiding academic misconduct (Academic Integrity → Avoiding Academic Misconduct).

We will outline below the process involved in investigating academic misconduct in this School, and briefly summarise the consequences involved when academic misconduct has been suspected or confirmed.

The UCD Academic Integrity Policy gives a range of definitions of activities and examples in practice of what is meant by Academic Misconduct. The School of Archaeology follows these definitions and examples, and a breach of these constitutes academic misconduct. They include, but are not limited to: plagiarism, unauthorised use of generative artificial intelligence, contract cheating and collusion. We noted this at the beginning of the document, but we want to remind you that our aim in the School of Archaeology is not to catch you out for misconduct but to support you in learning appropriate practices to avoid breaching regulations. We recommend that you take this short tutorial and Brightspace module to build your awareness: (opens in a new window)Academic Integrity - Referencing, Citation & Avoiding Plagiarism. There are three tabs on this page, please view the tutorial and the Brightspace module tabs, and if you wish, the additional resources tab. 

 Our expectation is that you will:

  • Get informed
  • Ask questions if you are unsure about anything described in this document
  • Embed ethical practices in your written work
  • If in doubt about who to speak to, your first point of contact can be the School of Archaeology Academic Integrity advisor, Associate Professor Barry Molloy

If you are unsure about what Academic Integrity is or need clarification on how to avoid plagiarism, please contact your Module Coordinator for a query specific to a module or your Stage or Programme Coordinator for higher-level queries. You may also seek the advice of the Academic Integrity Advisor at the School of Archaeology. These are the responsible parties and are best placed to provide you with correct advice. It is your responsibility to ensure that you are informed and that all assessments submitted conform to the standards set out on this page and in relevant UCD documentation cited herein. Some further resources you may find helpful are:

Content generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies must not be presented as your own work. Where an assignment in a module is marked with a red traffic light (Coded Red), you must not use generative AI tools in any part of the assessment process. AI-generated content is often factually inaccurate, out-of-date, and includes false or fabricated sources/citations. If you include factually inaccurate material and/or fabricated citations in your assessments, this may be reflected in a low final grade and in more serious cases, you may ultimately receive a fail grade. In addition, some content generated by AI tools makes use of authors’ ideas without referencing them, which is a form of plagiarism. If you submit AI-generated content that includes unreferenced material you will be in breach of the UCD Academic Integrity Policy.

In some modules you may be invited to generate and/or engage critically with content generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies as part of your assessment (Coded Amber or Green in the traffic light system used in the School). This engagement will always be done in line with the UCD Academic Integrity Policy and (opens in a new window)MLA style citation guidelines for generative AI. You will receive clear guidelines from your module coordinator about what is or is not permissible. It is your responsibility to follow those guidelines.

The use of Grammarly is permitted by University College Dublin with the stated purpose of supporting students to support the correction of fundamental presentation and grammar issues, specifically “grammar, spelling and punctuation errors. It can give feedback on word choice and writing style mistakes in your writing.”  Further information can be found on the CoSSL Student Supports page under Assistive Technology.

Grammarly may also AI assistive technology to advice on sentence structure and choice of words. This may result in fundamental changes to the meaning you wished to convey and can introduce inaccuracies. Furthermore, over-dependence on AI assistive technology for rephrasing your work make your ideas read in a very generic and tonally flat manner. This risks reducing your ability to learn how to express your own thoughts critically in an original and engaging manner, thus reducing your ability to achieve a high grade.

We therefore urge caution in the extent to which you use assistive technology to modify your writing outside of the intended scope of providing fundamental grammar and punctuation writing support.  

  • If a student is suspected of academic misconduct based on poor academic practice / breach of academic integrity guidelines, the Module Coordinator (MC) will reach out to the student in the first instance if clarifications are needed to determine the nature and extent of this. MCs may also reach a decision on how to proceed based on evidence in the submitted work without consultation with the student.
  • If the MC identifies poor academic practice (based on sections 3.6 and 5.1 of the Student Academic Misconduct Procedure) the MC may grade your work, with your grade and related feedback taking account of this poor academic practice, without further referral.
  • If the grounds for academic misconduct are adjudged to be more serious, more extensive and evidenced, the MC refers the case to the School’s Academic Integrity panel with a short report outlining the grounds of suspicion, a copy of the piece of work, and any supporting evidence.
  • Members of the Academic Integrity panel, comprising the of a Chair and two other members of the School’s academic staff (one of whom may be the School’s Academic Integrity Adviser), evaluate the case individually and decide on whether or not academic misconduct may have occurred, based on the UCD Plagiarism Tariff.

If the panel concludes that academic misconduct may have occurred, a meeting of the School’s Academic Integrity panel is then convened. The panel proceeds in one of the following ways: 

The student is informed by the Chair of the panel, via the student’s UCD email address, that

  • an assessment is under review as an alleged instance of academic misconduct and that the case is now being investigated by the School Academic Integrity panel.
  • The student is also informed about sources of support, such as those provided by their Student Advisors and/or the Students’ Union.
  • The student is invited to respond to the allegation by attending a meeting convened by Academic Integrity panel and is advised that their Student Advise, a representative of from the Student’s Union or another support person of their choosing may attend if that is what they wish.

A specific timeframe will be set out for the student within which they must confirm attendance at the meeting.

Alternatively, in cases of suspected serious or repeated incidents, the case is referred by School Academic Integrity panel without decision to the UCD Student Discipline Procedure. The student will be advised by a member of the School panel, via the student’s UCD email address, that they will be contacted directly by Student Engagement, Conduct, Complaints and Appeals ((opens in a new window)SECCA) in due course.

  1. If the student fails to respond to an email request to confirm a meeting time or fails to attend the confirmed meeting, the School Academic Integrity panel will, within any timeframes established, proceed to consider the case.
  2. The student will be informed by email of the outcome of the meeting within 5 working days.

The School Academic Integrity panel may decide any of the following, in line with UCD’s Student Academic Misconduct Procedure

  • That Academic Misconduct has not occurred. No record is kept on the Academic Misconduct Record System. The work is graded without penalty for Academic Misconduct.
  • That Academic Misconduct has occurred. The student will receive a verbal or written warning, be directed on where and how to receive advice about academic integrity (good writing, citation and referencing practices and avoiding plagiarism or other forms of academic misconduct) and the incident will be recorded centrally in the UCD Academic Misconduct Record System. The panel will apply a penalty in line with the UCD Plagiarism Tariff system.
  • The panel may refer the case without decision under the Student Discipline Procedure.

Students have the right to appeal decisions by the School Academic Integrity panel. 

For a map or overview of the process involved in dealing with plagiarism see: the UCD Process Map for School Academic Misconduct Procedure

UCD School of Archaeology is committed to creating an environment where diversity is celebrated and everyone is treated fairly, regardless of gender, age, race, disability, ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation, civil status, family status or membership of the Traveller community.

Many students experience difficulties with written expression, which may relate to a range of factors, including disability and proficiency in English. UCD provides a range of writing supports to help you express yourself effectively, that can be accessed here.

We stress the value of developing your unique voice in assessments and, with direct reference to this, the necessity of ensuring that assistive technologies are not used to re-write or fundamentally alter your text.

Students are encouraged to liaise with their module coordinator if they are experiencing difficulties resolving written expression to their own satisfaction in advance of submission of files for assessment.

Further information and supports regarding our policies on equality, diversity and inclusivity can be found here.

Our aim in the School of Archaeology is to provide a supportive environment for learning. We understand that administrative processes and disciplinary actions can be a difficult experience, but we hope also a learning experience.

In situations where you experience stress in the context of academic integrity processes, the University provides supports for your well-being that we draw your attention to – Student Counselling services.

Contact UCD School of Archaeology

Newman Building, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
T: +353 1 716 8312 | E: archaeology@ucd.ie