Earlier this month, Symplicity hosted a webinar with Macquarie University’s team that handles student complaints, appeals, and discipline. The webinar took a closer look at how Macquarie University have been using Advocate since July 2021 to report and manage their academic integrity breaches in a centralised, secure, and flexible system, that protects the privacy of student data and is compliant with their records management policy.
With Advocate, the team from Macquarie University discussed how it has access to the most up-to-date student numbers, enrollment, and transcript information. This means Macquarie can automatically route reported cases based on unit ownership and other information to the correct team to manage and report. Macquarie also utilises the communication tools within Advocate, such as email campaigns, standardised letters, and quick notes to keep communications within the system for archiving and accessing documents.
One of the areas in which Advocate has assisted Macquarie University has been to minimise gaps in monitoring trends and reporting to meet compliance standards. “I can actually run reports at the university perspective, at a faculty perspective, or program or course perspective, at the subject and unit perspective. Plus, assessment, time, and the individual student,” says Nerida Lithgow, Manager of Student Complaints, Appeals, and Discipline. “The reporting capabilities of Advocate are very impressive. So, we're going to start using Advocate for risk mitigation forensic analysis, particularly in relation to contract training where we can actually look at a trend over time or a particular sanction that's being applied to a student.”
Macquarie highlighted one of its most liked feature in Advocate, the Investigation Package Generator, which is great for committee members and investigators. “We've got standardised letters and recording letters, and our calendar synchronisations… We can collate very quickly a pack of 50 documents and then attach it as an email,” says Lithgow.
Macquarie highlighted how with integrating Advocate into a student system, you can report on a range of student cohorts, including:
- Entry Pathways
- Location of study (including any third-party delivery sites
- Mode of study (internal or offline)
- Country of Origin
- Status of actions
- Outcomes (any sanctions)
- Time taken to resolve any reported breaches
Those who attended the webinar also learned how to use Advocate to capture and report on Academic Integrity breaches at an institutional level or by faculty and unit of study.
Advocate is easily accessible via a portal for staff, students, and the public to report academic integrity breaches, either for a single student, or a cohort. Evidence documents can be attached to the reported breach to ensure all information related to a particular student breach can be stored and accessed in a secure, centralised location. Submitting breaches within Advocate is also easy, with options for bulk uploads and individual reporting options.
Symplicity has successfully delivered over 14 Advocate projects within the APAC region (400+ globally), and our team is highly experienced in partnering with the multiple departments related to case management enterprise case management solutions across all areas including academic integrity, all the way through to conduct, complaints, appeals, and more.
Interested in viewing the webinar recording? Email Daile Smith at dsmith@symplicity.com with the subject line "Academic Integrity with Advocate Recording."
