Handling student plagiarism: moving to mainstream

Oxford Brookes was the first institution in the UK to develop and implement a system of specialist officers to deal with students who did not comply with University regulations concerning academic conduct. The role of Academic Conduct Officers or ACOs was developed by a working group that revised University policies and procedures to deal with the rising number of incidences of student plagiarism and the concern that other misconduct was also not being dealt with fairly and consistently across the University. This paper discusses how the ACO-system has functioned over five years, in particular in the way punishments are selected and recorded. It identifies what has already been learned from using the ACO system and new issues that have emerged and identifies ways the University has developed a holistic approach to encouraging students' academic integrity