 Hello and welcome to the Academic Integrity webinar organized by European Network for Academic Integrity and Scientific Research Ethics and Bioethics at Uppsala University. Today we have with us representatives from the BRIDGE project Veronica Kvassnichan and Dieter Henrik Labolova who are going to talk about how to improve skills as a thesis supervisor. So, welcome. Thank you, Sunja. Thank you, Sunja, for the welcome. So now you should see my screen as being shared. So, today in the webinar we are going to focus on the skills of the supervisor with regards particular to academic and research integrity because this is what we focus on, not only in the European Network for Academic Integrity who is one of the organizers of this webinar but also in the in the BRIDGE project. So, let's start with a quick introduction of us, the presenters. So, my name is Ditta and I work in the European Network for Academic Integrity. I have been teaching and supervising thesis on a university, on Mandalay University for like 11 years and I'm also involved in the BRIDGE project and Veronica, she's a leader in the BRIDGE project of an output which is focused on bridging the academic and research integrity and she's actually the person who like stands behind the checklists for supervisors and for students which we are going to present today within the webinar. With this webinar we will start with some introduction where we will try to get some information from you, our participants. So, first we would like to get to know you a little bit because according to the registrations we know that we have quite a diverse audience and then we would like to ask about your experience and we would like to speak about the motivation why we actually were developing this tool and in the second half which will be taken over by Veronica, we will introduce you the checklist for supervisors and for students which are focused on like guiding the students and the supervisors through writing the thesis or supervising the thesis from the point of view of academic integrity and research integrity. So, first I would like to start with some introduction from you. So, I will share with you a quiz in Mentimeter, I guess you know Mentimeter or this kind of tools where you can just quickly answer our questions and I will start with three questions. First I would like to know what is your position at your institution, so who actually we have here, then how many thesis have you supervised, so to know how much experience supervisors we have here attending and if you previously received some training before you started supervising. So, to join the Mentimeter quiz it's like really simple just in your browser open a page which is menti.com I would recommend you to open it on a like different screen than when where you have this presentation it will be easier for you so for example if you have smartphone with you just like open it with your smartphone you don't have to download anything just like type menti.com and then type there this code which you can see on the on the screen sorry. I will type it also to the chat so you can copy it from the chat or you can retype it from the chat and by this you will join the quiz so I will open the quiz here. Ah okay you started answering during my introduction so it seems that we have the majority of teachers and or academicians we have some librarian and some researcher and we have no students okay there were quite many registered students I was wondering like about their level but it's missed it yeah not here or they don't want to tell so we will wait a little bit and if somebody is struggling with joining the Mentimeter just please let us know in chat so we can help you. The librarians are getting stronger okay and if you joined us just a little bit later you can still join us with this Mentimeter just by type pink menti.com into your browser and by submitting the code which you can see on the top of my screen which I'm sharing so I would move forward because we don't have so much time so thank you for the quick introduction so it seems that we have majority of teachers here and some librarians and some researchers so now I'm like really curious like what is your experience with supervision of tesis so how many tesis have you supervised please type a number in the field which you can see in the phone now you should see the second question okay so the answers are coming so five wow 120 okay a lot somebody very experienced so it seems that we range from zero to like yeah to 120 so this is like it actually in correspondence to our annotation that we wrote that this webinar is for newbies but also for experienced supervisors okay and my third question to you at this introduction before you start supervising your first thesis now this is a question for the ones who yeah probably just for the ones who have already supervised something or just like planning to supervise something really soon have you received some training so we have some standard training at your institution that for example everybody's receiving was there an experienced colleague who gave you advices talked to you told you what to do not to do or nothing but there is some guidance materials from your institution or like really no support from your institution and yeah it seems that unfortunately at most institutions or for most of you there is like really no guidance or no advices for the supervisors who are starting to supervise their first tesis okay so it seems that it's like really the majority who has not received any training so yeah and that's actually why we are here with the with this webinar and why we are here with the checklist to help in this case when there is like no other help coming so at least to help with the aspect of academic and research integrity in supervising of the tesis because we know that these are not the only aspects which we have to focus on in supervision there are so many aspects so at least with these two we would like to help you and as we are going to speak about the academic integrity and research integrity and I guess we are here quite white audience maybe probably with different backgrounds so we would like to ask you what is your understanding of the term academic integrity like yeah what do you imagine there it can be like one word the first thing which comes to your mind or some definition okay here we are coming with the definition ethical behavior being professional nice ethics in research so we are already coming here to the research being a good guide for students so teacher being a role model for the students individual and institutional practices in teaching research and scholarship so I suppose like the good practices and ethical practices make sure if you are still typing but I will just switch to the definition that we have or yeah the definition actually which I have on the next slide is the long definition which we have which appeared here as the first so compliance with ethical and professional principles standard and practices and consistent system of values which serves as a guidance for making decisions and taking actions and this is the this is the definition which is the official definition by the european network for academic integrity which we agreed on and which is available in our glossary of terms of academic integrity and also to compare it with another definition I choose the definition from the international center for academic integrity who is based in us so it's like yeah behind the ocean point of view on academic integrity who define the academic integrity as a commitment to basic six values which is honesty trust fairness respect responsibility and also courage because sometimes it takes courage to actually deal with some misconduct or to act in the compliance with the good principles okay so this is the definition of academic integrity and now let's go to the very close term which is the research integrity so this is the next question which will appear to you so the research integrity what do you understand under this term is there some difference from academic integrity yeah it's the same as the ethical behavior but I like the addition of the whole research process so now the research integrity focuses more on research process but we are keeping with the ethical behavior uh-huh anything else that it's in research compliance with the ethical and professional principle standards and practices by individuals or institutions in research be responsible uh-huh researcher which means being fair and ethical again the longest definition which appeared here the compliance with ethical and professional principles is actually the one which I wanted to share with you again this is the definition by Inay which you can find in our glossary so we can move forward I guess since no more definitions are coming so when we compare the academic and research integrity I think like we basically get to the same core that the values are the same it's just like a little bit of the aspect where we apply it in academic integrity we rather spoke about the teaching in general but in the research integrity obviously we focus rather on research they can practice probably academic integrity is often targeted on the newcomers to academia so maybe the new students who are entering the university they have some courses which might focus on academic integrity or maybe just like in between the lines in normal courses like the regular courses they appear things which are like focusing on this like cheating sorry not cheating and citing properly not plagiarizing and so on and then the research integrity education or focus on research integrity easily coming much later maybe in the early phd studies when the students are expected to do to do like really the research maybe sometimes it can be coming even later maybe when in some postdoc positions or entering the research labs already with the phd studies which is quite huge gap between the first year students who are like introduced to academic integrity and the research integrity education which is usually coming later if it's like coming much earlier at your institutions like good for you but from our experience it usually comes later so we would like to close this gap and put the research and academic integrity closer to each other because usually already the master students they are you doing some research project or they might be doing some research project within their thesis and definitely they are principles of research integrity there that they should be familiar with and that they should already know and this is why we actually were creating the checklist and why we were focusing on bringing these two principles together the academic and research integrity and the reason why we think it's important to focus on academic and research integrity in the thesis supervision is because at the end it leads to the higher level of education better quality of education better quality of results it prevents the cheating but we know that it's like really hard work because there are so many things which we have to focus when we are supervising a thesis so i'm coming with the last few questions from the mentor first of them is about the students from your institution do they receive some training in academic or in research integrity before they start writing their thesis so is it only in academic integrity or would you say it's rather research integrity only or kind of like both of them or no training i like that we have here the competition between the no training at all or at least in these aspects and the training of academic integrity so please one more vote so we know the winner who has more even if it's like nothing or the training in academic integrity both right that's even better okay so these are actually quite good results because yeah the first three columns means that the students are receiving some training from these integrity aspects which is like really great uh and one more uh i think it's this is the last question uh from the mentor which i will give you and this is now when we are going to practical things regarding the thesis supervision because we are going to share the checklists with you very soon which are like full of advices which have been collected from quite many experts so what would be your one would sorry one good advice that you give to your students when they are writing their thesis it can be like one good or the best advice which you think you are giving and if you are a student or if you don't supervise the thesis what would be the advice that you would like to receive before you would you were writing your thesis yeah so either is if you are a supervisor what you give or if you have not supervised the thesis like what you would like to know before you start writing okay be honest good one of the values from the international center for academic integrity cite everything that is not from your head yeah very good start now do not start too late yeah problem with timing uh huh it takes time to learn academic writing definitely a very good one in Czechia all different the thesis must be accessible to the to the public so have this on mind when you are writing the thesis like probably for the rest of your life your thesis will be available in public i believe this might be a case of many other countries as well and it's public and online that's like important thing to to mention because yeah when it's public and in some like dark hidden library then it's not so obvious but when it's on the internet so I'm sure if we should wait like for one more advice if somebody's typing if you come with an advice later something later comes to your mind please write it to the chat and now I think it's the time to give my word to Veronica who will introduce you our advice our advices which we collected and put them to the to the checklist yes thank you Dita thank you very much so now I'll I'll be talking about the new tool we developed about the checklist for supervisors which was developed by bridge project partners shortly about the bridge it's an international project where we are building bridges between higher education business and also citizen science we have partners from Sweden Lithuania Czech Republic of course Ukraine and Norma Macedonia so there are quite a lot of people from different fields different countries different backgrounds working together to promote academic and research integrity not only in in higher education but also business and citizen science more about the projects you can find in on our web page where we will share even other outputs of this project because the checklists are not the only one we are also developing guidelines and games and so on so if you want to know more about this project you can go to the website and if you don't want to miss any news you can put there your email and you are going to get the newsletter with every every news which are coming really soon because we are finalizing a lot of stuff now so for who are the checklists right now I'm talking about supervisors but we are making three types of checklists not only for the supervisors but for the phd or doctoral students too and also for the master students we have to mention that it's not for master students in general it's for master students who are writing their first thesis it's not for phd students in general mostly it could be said it's for that one who are writing their first article who are quite new in in research and in in their field and for supervisors we tried to be as general as possible to help the supervisors guide not only the master students but the doctoral students what is the main purpose and how it should help as it was said before the the checklist might be used to make sure that the students adhere to appropriate norms and values in the research and as they conduct their thesis work or the first article and the supervisors are there to guide and mentor them so we are not focusing only on the structure only on the tips how to write and so on we are focusing mostly on the values and the academic integrity which should be kept through the whole process of writing maybe it may sound easy to develop checklist you know sometimes you can you can just sit down or if you are writing your to-do list you can you can easily make the checklist for writing too if you have some knowledge if you if you wrote any thesis you might be able to develop the one checklist by yourself but we had a really long way developing this checklist and I think it's worth to mention our methodology and how the checklists were developed so diversion zero was when we asked the project partners from different countries and fields to independently of the others propose a draft of checklist why we did it this way is because we wanted to know how they how the project partners will develop the checklist what is going to be the structure what is what are going to be what is going to be the wording what they think it's important to mention and you know just to see ideas from different fields different countries so in total we got eight checklists and the first version we created was just by merging all the designs together and that was our start that's how we started of course there were a lot of repetitive ideas but that's how we saw that this is something worth mentioning this is something what really needs to be in the checklist because everybody was thinking about this one so we were for the commenting case and and modifying the wording and modifying the design and then we had like five rounds of the reviewing process online and also in person within our our team members with with our team members when we were again adjusting the content and wording and we were trying to develop the structure and so on when we thought that it looks good and it's ready to be published we asked for graphical design to make it readable and and make the graphical version and we got the feedback from conference and i conference attendees last year in in in porto sorry this year in porto and we were getting feedback from experts in academic and research integrity this was really huge eye-opener for us we said before this is just a draft but this is what this was something what helped us a lot so we changed the structure and we changed how we were looking at the checklist before and then we presented the version for for the end users we can say for master students phd students and also supervisors at the project ltt meeting in Vilnius we got another feedback and other great ideas how to make the checklist even better so then another version which was developed and this version we thought was thin was the last one but we got a lot of feedback from phd students who were attending an eye phd summer school in turkey and also we asked for the last feedback from experts from the field of academic and research and integrity around the world we were working on this feedback too and now we have the version seven of the checklist which is the final one and we uh this is the the version who which we are going to share so the way was quite long and it was really a lot of work done a lot of feedback from different people so we hope that we made our best to develop a tool which is going to be really useful for the supervisors and also for the students as i said before uh what what is the aim of the checklist and and how it should be used i have to mention that we designed the checklist to be used from the beginning of the supervision and through the whole process of writing thesis or any uh any any paper uh any research paper from for the phd students of course we everybody has to be aware that the list might need to be adapted to your needs depending on the research field depending on the past experience or the institutional policies and rules also we all know that it's not possible to make the checklist which is gonna suit to everyone and you're gonna be able to check every uh every checkbox so of course there might be uh some adaptation but we hope that uh it's gonna be uh really that the checklist is is gonna help us still with a lot of things and of course so we have to say for the supervisors that depending on the division of the responsibilities on the institutional level it might not be you as a supervisor who is who should be doing the items who are listed below in in the checklist but you have to make sure that your students is properly guided through uh through this process or through uh that items which are mentioned there because so one of the feedback was that okay but why should i do that this is the student responsibility but in other countries not the student responsibility the supervisors should have a look at it so that's why i'm mentioning it there's uh um that if you are not doing it you have to make sure that the student is doing it now about the content uh i was thinking how should i present this to you and i decided that it's gonna be the best if you are gonna have a look at it after the presentation if that you will uh get the the print pdf version and you will be able to go through this because it would probably take you uh quite a long time but uh i'm gonna shortly introduce you what you can expect to be there to be in in the checklist for supervisors uh there are gonna be some general preparations for me as a supervisor what i need to know before i will start to supervise the student what the institution expects and so on so some check some checks from this field of course we can miss the academic and research in integrity which is gonna clarify be clarifying the values and principles of cooperation and publishing not only for me but what should i introduce to the student and how uh next there are preparations for students work how we should set the workspace uh how uh we should communicate with each other what we have to think about before the students student will start uh how our cooperation will work after that there is formulating research questions and study uh important task which needs to be checked of course this part is not about you it's about the student but this is something what we had to mention what you have to look at it and or the supervisor should look at it and make sure that the student understood what what he or she should do then there is a part about the feedback about the communication with the student how the feedback should look like and just to make sure that you are communicating in right way and trying to encourage the student then there is a part about data processing and analysis uh just to mention some frequent problems in data collection and analysis uh it this part may be somehow uh uh not this part is definitely for everyone but it depends on what type of uh research you or the student is doing so maybe there will be some space for you to add some checkers to to which needs to be checked uh during the this data collection and analysis also there are tips on how to introduce students to academic writing if they had no course if they are not experienced in academic writing we are getting you some tips what you should maybe think about if the students are already introduced to this field that they are already writing it's gonna be easy for you just you know to think that uh yes i know that the student knows how to uh how to cite and i i don't need to mention anything but sometimes you even have to send some link for example which we are providing to help student make sure that the day and they know that they are citing and paraphrasing uh how they should there is also part about collaborative work uh what to watch out when you are cooperating not only you with the student but also if the student is cooperating with the third party for example someone from business and so on there is a part about ethical publishing how to help students successfully publish an article what they should think about and also final condensate radiation something not to forget before the defense not uh these are this is the content of the checklist which we will provide to you really soon and you will be able to go through and uh maybe give us some feedback to and what couldn't be missed is general tips which we are providing that for the for example for the supervisors that all the supervisors should be aware that they are role models so they should also incorporate the students into discipline help them cross the bridge from being a student to being a researcher for example if we are talking about the doctoral students uh this help is priceless uh encourage students to interact with the research community uh this is really priceless tip too for for new phd students to help them reach the community and introduce them to the community which could really help them and support them during their studies also encourage students to self reflect and help them to develop critical thinking try to motivate your students ask them about their work how is it going and uh uh you see you also as i said before if you are old model you shouldn't uh show the student that you are active and you are engaged and that you are reading their work and giving them the feedback also you should advise or you may advise the students to have a research diary as a useful tool to keep an important information in one place which can be helpful helpful for you too so you will see the progress of the writing now i introduce you to the to the supervisors checklist but we also developed two others for the master students and for the doctoral students too they are quite similar because during the writing the thesis or during the writing first article there are some steps which which are really common but for doctoral students we added of course more uh more checks about the publishing about the ethical publishing about the collateral collaborative research project and we were more focusing on formulating research question and and designing the research as it should look like for me as a phd student and also me as a supervisor before what i was before this would be a really helpful tool which i could give to the students so i can i can see their progress and they would know what to do i hope this that this checklist will help even the students who are struggling to cooperate with the supervisors because sometimes students are sharing with me i am i have to say that i'm running an instagram account for Czech and Slovak students which is called academic integrity or academic academic schaitika in our in our language and sometimes the students are telling me that they are having problems with with the supervisors and they don't know what to do and there are a lot of stuff they need to need to be done and they have no idea what where to start and so on so maybe even with the with the supervisors if this checklist will come this way to the students too who are struggling with them maybe this would be a really nice way to help even them to keep the track and to support them to check that or to be sure that they are doing what they should do and even if there is the supervisor help missing so i hope that this is not the case so when i'm talking to you while i'm talking to you as a supervisors but this is the other way i'm looking at the checklist so it's only for supervisors too to give something to the students they can work on together but even if the supervisor is not working as he or she should this checklist hopefully might help the students too of course we are going to share this with you and you will be able to go through that maybe adapt it as you wish now for now on the checklists are in the pdf version printable version but what we are working on is smart pdf because in in the checklist that there are some for example some some words they aren't going to be able to understand or some for example if we are talking about research diary they they maybe don't know what they should think about what what is the research diary so there is the link which which is helping them to understand how the research diary should look like and if we are talking about values of academic integrity there is a link to to the ICAI and which is talking about the these problems and talking about the values to make it sure that the students will understand all all everything what is in the in the checklist so for the conclusion from my side we know that writing that thesis is demanding and challenging sorry Dieter yeah i'm sorry to interrupt you but we have a question from the from the audience and i guess it's yeah that you can't see it when you are sharing the screen so there is a question if we can share the checklists like now uh and i'm sorry we can't share them now but we will send you next week the email with the link to the recording from this webinar to link to the presentation and we will also attach the checklist and they will be on the pages of the bridge project which we are going to share soon and maybe there is one more question i'm sorry it's just appeared there uh uh if the checklists are translated into other languages uh and uh okay there is a question about translation to Ukrainian and the seminatic among the Ukrainian students and faculty yes you may do it and we will be really really happy for this for now the checklists are available only in english uh but we are uh they will be available in under the creative commons license and we really really will come any translation so please translate them to your uh national languages share them with your students and if you send us back the translations we will share them on enite pages and on the bridge pages so they can reach also other people who speak to your language so thank you very much for this uh interest yeah i'm sorry Veronica for jumping in yeah that's completely okay thank you so as i'm trying to say we all know that writing the thesis is demanding and challenging task covering many aspects we also know that supervising thesis is demanding and challenging task covering many aspects and if the supervisor is willing to learn something new is willing to learn how to be better supervisor this is something which is the the best what could happen to the students because uh uh they will definitely get the best support during the writing and uh if they would really beneficial be beneficial benefiting from from this uh we are trying we were trying to show you this tool which should offer to students and also to supervisors some support and that could help you to manage the really hard and challenging task and we hope that you will be able and you will like the checklist and you will be able to share them with your colleagues and also with the students as Zita said they are now available under creative commons license the translations we are going to be great uh what i me personally i'm planning to to translate it into the check language because uh i'm working on this over over the year so i think i know every word and uh i'm definitely going to translate it into the check language to help to check with check and maybe a solo back students but if you are willing to share it and translate it into other languages we are going to be more than happy and if you are going to share the translation with us it is going to be the best so we we can share it with the others and help help others too this is all from me of what i wanted to share i need to promote our twitter and also our our webpage where we are going to share as i said the links to to the checklist and also other materials from our bridge project which hopefully might be beneficial for you too you can already find at the web page the presentation for from today and also other presentations from the project even the ones uh when we were developing the checklist and as we have still quite a lot of time uh there is a lot of space for your questions which we are happy to answer so please use the q and a tool which you should use in in zoom and this will display your questions to to us or i think you can also type the questions to the chat so everybody can see it oh sorry chat is disabled okay so only the q and a session for the for the questions thank you julia we have a thank you from uh from julia so thanks happy that that you like the project may i ask a question what in the process of writing thesis do you think would be most beneficial to use these checklists and what's the relationship between there are three different types of checklists so what's the relationship between them should i answer yeah so as i said before the uh checklists are intended to uh be used from the beginning of of writing so if uh when you know that you are a supervisor or you are going to be a supervisor you you can download it and and go through uh the uh the checks uh there are some important checks to needs to be checked before you are even supervising and then during the whole process of supervision there are some checks to be done so uh i think you the best start is is when you know that you are going to supervise and and of course even before the meeting with with the students because you will learn some things you need to discuss for example with the student before they will start writing and how this how these checklists are connected so many uh of course during the as during the writing of the students there are many aspects that needs to be checked so we try to connect the uh the this free uh this free checklist so if the students has the thick that they need to think about or they need to do uh the there is the check that the supervisor should check if it's done in the proper way so this is how the checklists are connected and uh how they differs as i said before uh for the supervisor for the master students it's more about writing thesis and for the phd students it's for uh writing not only the thesis but also articles so it's about the ethical publishing and uh maybe cooperation with third parties and so on so this is how they differs uh hopefully when we will go through this because it's it's quite a long reading so if hopefully if you will go through this uh you will find it useful and helpful for you and as we said we are also developing the smart pdf so in the spiral pdf you should be able to uh maybe add some of your tasks for example what you think is going to be missing or something what is going to be special for your field or from your institution and then give it to your students as a tool uh how with what they should or may use during their writing i think it's a good like not to see the checklists that i think that you would take once and you would just like check everything and have it done but it's like the really thing which uh either the supervisor and the student should use like continuously all the time and like checking it and maybe sometimes even like marking some things as in progress because they some of the things will really take time to before they are finished because yeah the thesis is long uh progress uh sorry long long time project yeah and even we tried to line it as it may be the the best way sometimes you need to skip something and then go back and forth to to make sure that it's done so uh this is this is how it works it's it doesn't have to be lined and you don't have to take it one after another maybe sometimes it's uh good for you to skip to to another part and and go back but we tried to do our best to make it uh as it should on may uh be best during the writing process okay i don't see any new questions in the q and i or nor in chat i would like to thank data and Veronica for joining us today and presenting this interesting project that i'm coordinating i think i must say in order to be ethical of course so i'm kind of biased but please follow the project on the twitter and in social media and facebook next time we will see each other on november 11th and our guests are going to be from the european students union uh Oraz Miradov he is going to talk about celebrating the european year of youth through academic integrity how students help in establishing institutional integrity and values uh you can see here the link to the website academicintegrity.eu slash vp slash eni monthly webinars these members or the oraz is also a member of the eni working group for students whose purpose is to integrate students and student bodies in eni activities so please join us to learn more about how to engage students basically in this important task we all are so passionate about creating the culture of academic integrity so thank you so much for today the webinar is recorded and will be published on the website and on the on the eni youtube channel and don't forget to check the checklists next week on the bridge project the bridge project site is also hosted by eni so you can find it on the same web page thank you so much for today titan baronica once again thank you very much thank you very much for everybody joining us