Promoting study skills and good academic practice

Professor Graham Virgo

Faculty of Law and Senior Tutor, Downing College

The need to promote study skills

• The gap between school and university

• The ‘only one correct result’ mentality

• The library as a new experience

• Reliance on the Internet

Responsibility for promoting study skills

• Faculties and Departments - teaching members and Librarians• Colleges

- Senior Tutors - Tutors

- Directors of Studies- supervisors

- Librarians

What are study skills?

• Reading

• Note-taking

• Writing

• Research

• Thinking: analysis and criticism

• Time management

Good academic practice

• Plagiarism is defined as ‘submitting as one own’s work that which derives in part or in its entirety from the work of others without due acknowledgement’.

• 49% of respondents to a Varsity survey admitted plagiarism

Examples of plagiarism

• Quoting verbatim

• Paraphrasing another’s work without due acknowledgement

• Using ideas taken from another

• Cutting and pasting from the Internet

• Submitting someone else’s work as your own

• Collusion

Developing good academic practice

• Effective induction

• Supporting students under pressure

• Advising about use of web-based sources

• Designing plagiarism out of the system

• Paper mills and essay banks

Consequences of plagiarism

• Reporting plagiarism and suspected plagiarism

• Academic integrity and references

• Disciplinary implications:

(i) Examination marks and awards

(ii) University’s Courts