• Review of national policies and other documents valid on national levels
• Collection of quantitative data via online questionnaires available in local languages
• Collection of qualitative data via:
• Interviews with teachers and with leaders and managers of higher education institutions
• Focus groups with students

PAICKT team offers workshops or lectures on the topic of academic integrity to the institutions we visit. These can be tailored to suit students or teachers. Please discuss your preferences in advance of a visit so we are aware of what would work best for your institution.

The workshop is a mixture of information, activities to make participants think about the issues and discussions. It also presents results from European-wide surveys about plagiarism. Participants are encouraged to share their personal experience. We will talk about the understanding of plagiarism, discuss several scenarios and assess their severity. We will also consider reasons leading students to plagiarism, and discuss prevention, and also the policies and penalties which are a necessary part of the prevention. As for prevention, we will share the best practices collected in the European-wide project. In the end, a brief introduction to the technical aspects of plagiarism detection will be given: What are the plagiarism detection tools able to discover, where are their limits and how to read similarity reports.

The discussions with students from the local universities in focus groups are a very important part of the research. We very appreciate open discussions with students, their honesty and their trust in the researchers. Everything said in the focus group is confidential and will be only used anonymously - individuals and the institution will not be identifiable in the research results.

A focus group is a research method involving a small group of (ideally 5-12) people and a facilitator. The participants are asked to discuss their views about a certain topic. The goal is to collect the reactions from a small sample of people that should reflect the views of the larger population.

If you are unhappy with any aspect of this research, please first contact the Coventry University Principal Investigator: ireneg@coventry.ac.uk. If you still have concerns then please contact to Pro Vice Chancellor for research Professor Olivier Sparagano, DVC Office, Coventry University, (o.sparagano@coventry.ac.uk).

The research design has been reviewed and approved through Coventry University`s Research Ethics procedures. To see the Certificate of Ethical Approval, please contact Dr Irene Glendinning (ireneg@coventry.ac.uk).