Referencing advice with Sam from the SU

Join Liz and Sam from the SU for a podcast on referencing on 'The Skills Pod'. Grab your cup of tea and biscuit, sit back and relax whilst Liz and Sam give you tips and hints to take you through the expectations of referencing and the support the SU can give you if things go wrong. 
 

 Running order of the referencing advice podcast 

• The role of the SU
• Sam's role within the SU
• Why referencing is so important
• Academic integrity
• SU support if things go wrong

Transcript

This is the skills pod with me Liz Johnson. And today we have a very important visitor. Please introduce yourself, Sam. Hello. Hello. And I am Sam Stuart's I'm the head of advice and policy at chess, the Student Union advice and policy that is a cool title. And so what is Chester Student Union there to do? And what are you there to do within the Student Union.

So Chester Student Union has got a few sort of branches that fall under it. So we we run the advice centre, which I'll I'll delve into a little bit more, we also cover representation. So all of the course and department reps will look after those. We also do student opportunities, which is used societies, it's also ready to advance. And we we have quite a big presence on social media as well, particularly at the moment with us being quite a digital world digital environments, we're putting a lot of different activities online as well. And at the top of the Union, we have five elected officers that work full time they were students, and they run for the position, usually in their last year of study, but you can do it in between your studies as well. And they they work full time with the Union for the year to represent students in areas like activities, academic and on the satellite sites in Warrington in Shrewsbury as well, in terms of advice, and so because the union separate from the university, we could give the impartial advice on subjects that the university can't always cover. So especially things like academic appeals, and also providing representation for meetings with the university, whether it's to do with disciplinaries, or whether it's to do with academic integrity, which is is why we're here today. But we also cover things like housing, we cover a little bit of budgeting, and some reporting as well. 
Fab, so you really are a union for all students to have as representation? Absolutely. Fantastic. Oh, that's great. So it's one of those things that people hear about the issue and talk about the Students Union. But until you actually dig down, you don't really realise how many facets you can help and support students with and how many different ways you have got people who, like you say, or just students who've just finished or in the middle of the degrees, who were being professional students to help other students, and how there's all sorts of advice and support and different bits and pieces that can just make the student experience less difficult, more seamless, you know, food, make people feel as though they fit in and find societies they're interested in and, and all kinds of things. So it's such a big range, you must be really busy, little bit, yes. 
But yeah, we ultimately what we want to do in the union is we want to be offering services that improve the student experience. So whether it is supporting students through something via the advice centre, or providing those opportunities to interact with other students, free societies, all to kind of improve your employability as well free things like the course reps or through various volunteer opportunities that we have throughout the year. So that's, that's ultimately what the union wants to be here for and to make sure that, that you're getting the best from, from your experience as a whole. Fantastic. And you mentioned that we're here to talk about referencing, and that's what we are going to go on to talk about, how long have you worked for the union? How many years of experience? Oh, so I started, I started in March 2013 at the end, and so I've been here, seven and a half years now, obviously, the Union and the University have changed so much in that time. And we just try and make sure that what we're doing is reflecting what the student body needs in any one year happy. You've said you've seen a few changes of things like the Office of students, has that changed your remit? Or have you had quite a few different things that you did in a different way, you know, like you've you've mentioned about technology and the amount of things that we've put online now.
Is your role expanding all the time and changing sort of year to year depending on what students need? Yeah, so we very much go off of what students need at that point in time. We we ask a lot of questions of students. We've got a survey at the moment, actually, for students to fill in, to really tell us what they need from us. And and ultimately that that does chop and change a little bit that the baseline stays, the same students are here to hopefully enjoy themselves at university come out of the free years, or however many years with their degree in whichever form it needs to take. And also to feel that they've really accomplished something, and that they feel confident they can go out into the wider world. And so from the union side, we just want to make sure that we can support them in that, whether it is that they just need, they need that extra social interaction with others, they might need that little bit extra support if something's gone a little bit wonky, or they might just want the extra opportunities to build on themselves. But yet, we are very much student led on what students say that they want us to be. It really is the students voices now. And so we're stumped and talk about referencing referencing. And malpractice, I guess, or plagiarism are terms that get bandied around and they they incite terror, or at least panic and worry, because people think they understand what they're doing and how they're referencing. But mistakes can happen, things can go wrong, and people can do things, or unintentionally.

How is the UK degree scheme set up? That might be different, say if there are international students or there were people who were doing postgrads and they've done an undergrad somewhere else in the UK, we use the APA referencing system by and large, we do use MHRA as well. But APA is quite a rigid referencing system, isn't it? It's not very easy to play around with you've got to do things in a certain way. Otherwise, you can come on stalk. Is that fair? Yeah. And my degree was actually under APA referencing. So I know that system very well.

And it is it is quite a rigid referencing system, I think it takes quite a bit of practice to definitely get it right. And I do think that the the, the lecturers at the University are quite understanding of that, generally speaking. And so they're more than happy to sort of talk through and sure on how that should fit together. But you know, it just become the case that sometimes that mistakes do happen. And particularly if you haven't been in education for a while, if you're a mature student post grad. And if you're coming from different cultures as well, we do see some people that that kind of stumble a little bit if they're coming from an international background as well. And I think it's it's important to to take advantage of any opportunities that you're given to learn more about it and to tweak it and gain the feedback on that as you go along. Yeah, absolutely. So as study skills, we, as a department, we were in quite a lot of webinars a moment on APA referencing, on getting comfortable with using the guide with looking at how you put other people's arguments into your own writing so that you're not inadvertently passing off somebody else's ideas and intellectual property as your own. We've got the LTI skills@chester.ac.uk that students can always use to email if they've got questions or queries. If you go to portal, in our Moodle space on training and skills, we've got loads of little videos and all kinds of question and answers and frequently asked questions about the guide, and about how to implement it. And also, there's the link that LIS have to the actual APA guide. They're the ones who do it. Referencing is a well, we all reference throughout our lives, we just don't know that we're necessarily doing it and we're not doing it in a formalised way. The example I usually give is somebody saying to me, I've seen on the BBC website, it's going to rain tomorrow should we rearranged going for a walk because it's not going to be nice weather or something like that. Are you still referencing that you've got the information from somewhere else? It can be a bit difficult when it's somebody else's intellectual thoughts and ideas. And we do get students saying, well, I've read this, but I'm not quite sure where I've read it, but I agree with it. So it's now my idea.

How do you how do you manage to unpick some of the issues that you might see with students who've got referencing or malpractice or plagiarism issues? So I think quite a few of the the cases that we see tourism and they usually they are usually sort of a first case that it's 
come forward. And, and one of the core difficulties that we see quite regularly is this idea that you see they're not in quotations or maybe the quotation was found somewhere else, as well. And and and so hasn't been referenced quite appropriately. What we what we tend to suggest is that actually, the preparation of your assignment is really key. Because while you're doing the practising and the reading before putting your essay together, if, regardless of where you've read it, just save what that is. And I think that the best example that I saw of someone sort of preparing their assignment was they started with a draft file on words, and anything that they read from elsewhere that they thought looked good. They they put their copy and paste into Word, but they highlighted it in like in one of the highlighter colours on word. And they put a link to the source that they'd found it. So they knew that they'd got all these all these sources that they'd read. And then when they were put in the essay together, they were double checking to see if it was almost just that they'd recalled quite accurately something said, and if they had, then the the need to paraphrase it properly and reference it, or they needed to quote it and reference it. So it's really that key of remembering what you've read. And as you read it, note it down note where you've got that from, so that you can't, then later down the line go, Oh, I know, I've read it somewhere. But where did I see it, you've already got that reference point that written down, do you know, that's something that we come back to time and time, again, is that the planning stage and the critical reading are absolutely critical to success. And if you are doing critical reading, then part of that is, as you say, exactly, noting down the argument, noting down where they came from noting down why they're important. If you are just reading and then writing based on something you've read, you're not going through that critical phase. And then it's going to be a possibility more of a possibility for you to inadvertently make somebody else's idea seem as though it's your own or not realise you've actually got it from that reading, because you've not done it critically, and you've not actually had a logical or methodical way to point out the things that are somebody else's, and that come from somewhere else, not from your brain. That's such a good point. And we also see a lot of the students that don't plan their assignments, they don't have the solid foundations and scaffolding. So they can just take ideas from everywhere, it might be at the 11th hour, they might only have a couple of days left to get things in. And that's also when they come on stock, they're just trying to write as a reactionary thing, and it doesn't filter through that they got that from somewhere, as you say, they just remember it and put it down. And if they've not got a plan, it's a lot more chance that that they can be miss associating the information.
  
And it is it's all about time management, isn't it and it's all about knowing what you're going to do and how you're going to do it. And so I think time management and having a structure to academic learning, it sometimes takes people it freaks them out, because they don't realise how much independent learning is going to be required of a degree, and how much self directed and that's then gonna lead to issues and problems down the line. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think the one thing that I add adds to what you touched on there as well, is about the idea of having a short time window left to do it if you've left it quite late. And we see a number of cases each year, where students may have had personal circumstances going on leading up to the deadline. And then the student has realised a couple of days before all my deadlines in two days, and I need to get this done. And, and they don't feel that there's any other option other than to just rush through getting the assignment submitted. But once an assignment is referred for a breach of academic integrity, then the intent isn't taken into account there. It's just whether or not there is a breach or not. And so I'd say if if any students do have personal circumstances that are affecting them, it's it's more important to to look at applying maybe for an extension or even a deferral on the assignment to give yourself that breathing room to get the preparation done to make sure that it's the best that you can submit rather than having to rather than rushing through an assignment and then facing a meeting with the department about academic integrity on top of the troubles you might already having.
  
Yeah, that's really good advice because you want to defuse the situation not add to your anxiety do you? Yeah, yeah, definitely. That makes a lot point of Yeah. What what stage? Do you tend to see students? Do people come to you, once they've put work in, you know, say somebody had put some work in, they've handed it in. And then they realised as they were checking back through it a day later, that they've got something that they hadn't referenced properly, or that there was an issue. Can they note something straight away? Is there anything, you know, if students suddenly realise they've made a mistake, or they've chopped something out? And potentially It looks as though they've tried to pass someone else's work offers their own? Is there a mechanism for them to say, Oh, no, oh, no, before it even gets marked in effect. And so that, that wouldn't usually be a stage that we'd see the students per se. I think if we had a student approached us with that scenario, saying, I've just submitted this work, I've realised that I've submitted a draft or I've submitted this work, and it's got an error in it, I think the first route to be looking down would be, well, it's a bit of contact your tutors initially. And because they may well be able to sort of provide you with that buffer time to be able to amend it, if it's after the deadline. So if you've submitted, the deadline has passed, and then you've noticed, then you wouldn't be able to get an extension on that time or anything. And but you may be able to, if, depending on the circumstances that surrounds that, you may be able to get the mitigating circumstances, that would mean that that particular submission wasn't included as a submission, it was basically wiped off the record, and they submitted in the next period. So it's not something that we'd necessarily get involved in at that stage. But that would be the advice would be to talk to the department first, and say, I've made an error, what steps can I take, and whether or not they could manually tweak that, or whether it would need to go through all the processes would kind of differ depending on the scenario. But we'd usually that the vast majority of students we see are usually when they get that initial email from the department saying that their work has been referred for a breach of academic integrity. And, and that they need to meet with the student to discuss it further to see if they think that there has been a breach or if there hasn't, so that's usually where where we step in at that stage. That sounds like it's, I mean, it's going to be stressful anyway, you're waiting for your results. And then you find out you've had this email about a breach, it must be quite difficult to talk to people when that's happened to them. And they're trying to process what's going on. Have you got any advice for people? What are the common things that you see, that people might want to just go through when they're proofreading things? You know, from the point of view, I can say the sort of common things that we see, but what are the common things that you see once it's already been handed in, it is at the wrong side of the deadline, as it were. So so when we, when we see the students, they've usually been sent a copy of the Turnitin report as well. And which has the areas highlighted that have flagged for eternity in and so the the general trends that we see on there are usually in relation to quotations and referencing. And so what what will tend to find is on that reports, there will be maybe sections of a paragraph that are in that specific colour that relates to that particular source at the bottom of the report. And those those blocks when it is a student who who has unfortunately breached the policy, it's usually a case that either there's full sentences that aren't in quotation marks. And or maybe that the students attempted to paraphrase, but maybe hasn't done it enough, and, or that they have paraphrase, but they still haven't referenced where they got it from. And so it's remembering these key details. Actually, if you've got the information from somewhere else, you really do need to say where you got it from. Another thing that comes up, not necessarily like level four, but maybe a little bit higher, is sometimes people might reuse work as well. So there's a section onto the policy that is about reuse of previously submitted material. And what we find sometimes is if students have done a similar essay earlier on in their in their degree, and a similar topic comes up later, they might think, oh, I've covered that before. And there's nothing wrong with going back and looking at your previous essay if you think that you've got a really valid point that you made in that first one, but you need to remember to reference yourself. If you're going to do that
And sometimes that gets missed. So there might be just sections that come from that one that then come through into a new essay. And then obviously, we'll get flagged for eternity in because all of the submissions that are sent into Chester, go into the Turnitin programme as well. And so it will flag up and turn it in and say, Oh, this comes from an essay that has been submitted to test the previously backs on our seminars and workshops and webinars and some of the teaching that we do. We've got different kinds of paraphrasing, one of the things in there about referencing is do your reference, your own work, and it is it's that case, if it's already been through or submission. If it's already been through to anything, then yes, you do need to reference it because it's going to come up. So you're plagiarising yourself? Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. And also the way you talk about paraphrasing and quoting quotations the number of people that will put in person who's the author, the date, but they won't put the specific page number or paragraph. So they'll put it in quote, marks, but it's not a complete direct quotation, you always need that page number, or the paragraph number if it's on a website. So it's been absolutely specific, isn't it? And, again, the paraphrase and we paraphrasing, I was talking about this today, if you only have a couple of assignments to be in, you don't get a chance to practice. So you have to, in a way, create an artificial environment for you to be able to practice these skills. And paraphrasing is a skill, and it can be difficult to do it effectively. So we would say in in study skills that only use a direct quote, if the words are more important than the meaning. And if the meaning is more important than the words, then paraphrase it. So the example that I quite like for that is there's a direct quote from Burton that talks about we have about criticism, and it says, we have to brace ourselves for the onslaught of criticism. And that is beautifully phrased and really finely honed, it has a real physical component to it. And if I were to write criticism is difficult to take, it doesn't have that emotional attachment in the language. So that is where I would use the word rather than my interpretation of what the words mean, it can be very easy to paraphrase things by just trying to turn the words around, or right click and see what are the synonyms word comes up with. And that isn't paraphrasing. And that can get people into trouble patterns, it can make you too close to the original. And it isn't what you think the ideas mean. It's you just transferring one word for another. Yeah, and turn it in, we'll still flag that as well. And so when it's in the sentence, if you have decided to find a couple of synonyms for for that sentence, and it will still block it out in yellow, and it'll just blank out the words that you've swapped. So it'll still pick up on where it's come from, it'll just notice that there's a couple of words that have changed.

But it comes back to that critical reading. So as you said, you know, you might make a direct quote from somebody and write it down and highlight in a different colour. And you may then want to go back to it that well, what does that mean to me and try to write it in your own words, and then compare it with the say was too close? Is it? Have I really understood it? Or I've just tried to interpret it into all the words that mean the same thing. And it takes time. And of course, as we've mentioned before, if you're on a short time scale, then mistakes can happen.

What are the potential consequences for academic malpractice or being reported? Is it I mean, it's serious, say blow within academia isn't it is, yeah, and so it very much he can very much vary depending on on how you've breached the policy. And a lot of the cases that we see it is sort of a first offence as they term it. And so it's a first offence, it's usually a level five or six. And, and for levels five and above, there's a standard penalty for first offence. So if it's the first time this happened, and it's been identified as plagiarism or reuse of of your own

Or collusion falls under, they all fall into unacceptable academic practice. And if it's one of these things, then they apply what's called a standard penalty, if it's the first time it's happened. And for level four, and that would mean that the work is remarked less any areas of academic integrity. For level five or above, you're asked to complete an online academic integrity course, which is actually it's actually accessible outside of receiving a standard penalty, but without the test at the end. So you can go and access it and work on your academic skills anyway. And but the standard penalty is this academic integrity course. And it talks you through all the different forms of references, skills of you know, having, having looked at your work, made sure that the quotations are right, the references, right and so on, and talk to you free things like collusion house, how to avoid that as well. And, and then there's a little test at the end of that. And as long as you pass that test, the work is released back to the department. No, sorry, I'm telling myself around the department will market same as level four their market lesson areas of academic integrity, that mark depends on what is left in the work really, and but they won't, it won't just be sort of the Turnitin percentage deducted off of your work, it will be a valid mark for what is left in the assignment. So your mark is then released, as long as you pass the course, if for any reason you did fail the course, then you'd be given a mark of zero for the work. But generally speaking, the majority of people do pass that course. And as long as you take some time to sit down and engage with it and actually look for it properly, then, you know, the majority of time that that would result in a pass, the only time that things get a little bit more serious is if you then had another breach, or if you had what's termed academic misconduct. And so academic misconduct is things like falsification. And so that could be where if you if you're doing some form of research for the assignment, if you falsified the data, for instance, and or if you applied for mitigating circumstances, and you used fake evidence, then that can be turned for certification as well, because it's affecting you studies. And commissioning is when you go outside of the university, or inside for that matter, and attempt to buy the essay for the assignment, because that would no longer be your work. And, and it shows that you've you've actively tried to not do this work, because you've tried to either whether there's payment or not, if you've tried to get someone else to do that work for you, it's term commissioning. And there's also areas such as research, misconduct, and such if those come up, or if it's a second offence, and then you're invited to attend a panel, which is a panel of stuff that Look at, look at what's happened, look at the work, they'll discuss with you and the department and what what has occurred. And ultimately they'll decide if there is a breach of the policy. If it's a second offence, it's not going to be as serious as those academic misconduct areas. And it would it would usually result in in sort of an automatic failure of the assignment or the module. And in extreme cases, it could mean sort of failure of the year or more severe penalties. But generally speaking, it's it's not as extreme as misconduct. misconduct is kind of the really bad.

And you as the Student Union would be able to offer advice and support in order to sort of negotiate anything that happened. Absolutely same terms in terms of what advice doors and will receive an email from a student saying that they've had a letter that there's a breach of the policy will establish what exactly the breach is that is been alleged. And if it's if it's plagiarism, if it's a first offence, then the majority of the time we're going to, we're going to sort of probably calm you down first and say it's okay, this is a first offence, it's meant to be a learning experience as a first offence is very, very much meant to be a learning experience. And so we'll go through the report with them in some detail and go, this is why we think that this might have happened, the sheen, who she also looked for and gone, I think this is what's happened. And we will happily go to the initial meetings with students. And if they want us there, if they feel quite comfortable attending, that's fine. But we'll happily go to those meetings and talk them through their options in terms of accepting the allegations or rejecting them. And if it does, go to a panel, then we'll do some preparation

The student before they get to panel on what might be discussed and on what they may want to present from their side as well. And we're happy to attend in person as well on the day. And we can also help with sort of appeals afterwards if it ends up going that far as well. And so yeah, if if a student approaches us with an issue of academic integrity, we will happily be there from the initial starting conversation through to wherever it ends up. And how do students go about contacting you, Sam. And so the best way to contact us at the moment, we've got our contact form on our website. So it's Chestersu.com and it's forward slash advice, and forward slash contact. And but the advice section has got a load of guidance on it as well. And we're also operating a live chat every weekday between two and three on the website as well. So you can just click on the box and type in and we'll respond to, that's fantastic. I'm just gonna double back because this new brought in. So what happens if people are doing maybe group work or if they're working together, and they hand in work that comes up with a similarity a high similarity through Turnitin? Is that where the term collusion comes in?

So that may be where collusion comes in. And it's always important to double check what the terms were setting the assignment. So if usually, what would happen on a group assignment is you're asked to work together on an element of it. So it's a presentation, you're asked to work on that presentation together. But then you're asked to individually work on an essay that goes alongside that presentation, for example. So the information on the presentation is is a joint piece of work, you've been asked to do that jointly. But if you've been asked to do those essays individually, and they come out as high similarity, then yes, that would, that would count as collusion because you're being asked to use your own personal experience, your personal way of writing up, what you've just done is to mirror that amongst you. Okay, that's brilliant. So this was Sam Stewart and Liz Johnson from study skills. And Sam Stewart from the SU. She's the advice and Policy Bod. Sam, thank you so much for talking to us about the importance of referencing and ways to avoid any issues. And if you do have any issues, please go to the issue for help and advice. And that that's what they're here for. They're your student union. No problem. Thanks for having me.

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