Student volunteers will ensure academic integrity during the session

Academic integrity is one of the most frequently heard phrases in higher education as the reckoning approaches. It is during them that VDU Students' Representative Office (VDU SA) organizes examination observations, in which all students who wish can become observers. 

Academic integrity is a concept that has many meanings. Its main essence is compliance with the VMU academic code. According to Gustė Žukauskaitė, academic affairs coordinator of VDU SA, actions such as plagiarism of works or ideas, falsification, fraud during settlements or tolerance of fraud are treated as academic dishonesty, as well as, of course, appropriating other people's written works or writing them for other people.

Students who are not in academic good standing may receive credit from that creditable subject. For this reason, failure to settle debt may result in a student losing a state-funded place on a summer rotation, and graduate students may lose the opportunity to defend their thesis if they have debt. Such unethical student behavior can also be referred to the ethics commission, which after analyzing the situation can make decisions ranging from a personal warning to expulsion from studies without the right to return.

In order to avoid cases of academic dishonesty, VDU SA conducts examination monitoring. Students themselves can become observers and contribute to ensuring academic integrity during the upcoming exam session. Erika, a student of Primary education pedagogy and early foreign language teaching, who has been in the position of a student-observer more than once, says that the goal of the observers is not to scare students, but only to ensure the smooth execution of the settlement and to help the teacher monitor whether no one is texting. When asked about how the surveillance works, Erika says that she does not want to reveal her secrets:"these can be used later by the students against the observers, but I can say that each student-observer has his own tricks and techniques that he uses to observe settlements."She reminds that it is important to observe academic honesty, because a student enters higher education to gain knowledge, and it is academic honesty that helps to do this qualitatively, and also every student, by signing the study contract, agrees to the point that all students must be academically honest.

Payment monitoring will be conducted during the autumn semester exam session. Volunteer student-observers will help to ensure academic honesty during them. Any student can become them (except for first-year undergraduate and integrated study students).

If you have any questions, contact e-mail. by mail: akademai@vdusa.lt.