From the Assistant Principal - Teaching, Learning and Wellbeing

Online Safety and Academic Integrity

As we move into the end of the academic year, we want to highlight two crucial areas impacting your child's success and well-being: online safety and academic integrity.  These interconnected topics are vital for ensuring a positive and authentic learning experience for every person at St Andrews College.

The digital world is an integral part of modern learning, offering incredible resources and opportunities. However, we must always be aware that it also presents risks.  One main concern is the security of usernames and passwords.  The College cannot emphasise enough how important it is that all students create strong, unique passwords for all their online accounts, including their college Google and email accounts.  These passwords should never be shared with anyone, including friends or classmates.  They should also be regularly updated and changed.

Account security is not just about protecting personal information; it’s also about academic integrity.  Unauthorised access to accounts can lead to cheating and academic malpractice which has serious consequences.  The St Andrews College policy on plagiarism and academic malpractice can be found in the Assessment Information Booklet on the College’s Student Information Hub.  

 Academic integrity is the basis of a successful education.  It means completing assignments honestly, using your own ideas and words appropriately, and giving credit to the sources that students have used to complete their work.  Plagiarism, the act of presenting someone else's work or ideas as your own, is a serious issue because it is unfair to the students who have completed their work in the right way.

Accessing AI tools can be helpful in assisting with an outline of a task or an understanding of an idea, but students must state the tool that they used and cannot simply copy and paste the AI’s response and submit it as their own work. This is an example of academic malpractice. Students must learn to cite sources accurately, giving credit to authors and researchers whose work they've used.  This is important not only to avoid plagiarism but also to demonstrate the depth of their research. 

It is essential that parents discuss the importance of online safety and academic integrity with their child. Parents need to monitor their child’s online activity in order to assist them build healthy and responsible online habits. This in turn will ensure that all students receive the grades they have worked for, and their results will demonstrate what they have truly achieved in their learning.

Ms Josilin Kalifa

Assistant Principal

Teaching, Learning and Wellbeing