Polonious for Universities

“If a higher education provider loses its reputation for integrity, its continued existence is jeopardised.”
Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency

Guidance Note on Academic Integrity

“E-governance is easy governance, effective governance, and also economic governance. E-governance paves the way for good governance. “ 

Narendra Modi

Prime Minister of India

“If a higher education provider loses its reputation for integrity, its continued existence is jeopardised.” 

Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency

Guidance Note on Academic Integrity

A group of university graduates stands facing away from the camera.
Picture of a university in autumn

Protect Your Reputation

“If a higher education provider loses its reputation for integrity, its continued existence is jeopardised.” – Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency Guidance Note on Academic Integrity

An institution’s reputation for academic integrity is paramount. There are many challenges to this:

  • Contract cheating
  • Plagiarism
  • Research misconduct
  • Cheating in exams
  • Offering and accepting bribes for admission or grades.
  • Fabrication or falsification of information.

An institution without a standardised, process-driven solution to these challenges, puts their reputation at risk. Polonious delivers:

  • The ability to enshrine the rules and policies of your institution in a systematic way.
  • Systems for reporting, monitoring and recording complaints and breaches.
  • Effective and consistent methods to deal with cases.
  • Analytics to improve policy and methods of teaching, learning and training.
  • Confidence in reporting of breaches, acknowledgement and action for all participants.

Enhance Government

“E-governance is easy governance, effective governance, and also economic governance. E-governance paves the way for good governance. “ – Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India.

In the increasingly competitive world of higher education with external forces on funding, ensuring good governance is more challenging than ever. Polonious will enhance compliance with policies across numerous and varied organisational units by setting core processes, while still allowing each area flexibility in operational processes around that core.

Polonious ensures that your institution will:

  • Follow best practice in governance.
  • Adhere to policy requirements while creating an audit trail.
  • Maintain a consistent approach to case management across faculties.
  • Track recurring misbehaviour, who is reporting it and who isn’t.
  • Accurately report on cases and statistics.
  • Analyse the relationships and behavioural trends with individuals and organisations.


By automating and capturing all misconduct data in one place, Polonious is able to accomplish these goals with very small administrative overhead. A layered approach to security allows control over which users see and interact with different parts of the system and process, ensuring confidentiality of student information, outcomes, witness and whistleblower identities, and so on, by limiting information access on an as-needed basis.

Improve Efficiency

“Polonious was our choice a very conscious choice. Case management is very easy in terms of finding providers who can do it. There are lots of them of them out there. There are very few who have actually any idea about how to do it within a University system and even less who have done it in student discipline…”

Easy to use webforms
Simple web forms enable immediate capture of key information and documents, case creation and decisions, with on screen acknowledgement and continuing feedback via emails. This builds confidence in the process. A collaborative, secure, shared working environment, that records all decisions, actions and evidence involved in a case.

Communication by email enables you to record and capture:

 

  • Notifications
  • Responses
  • Documents
  • Decisions
  • Meetings
  • Sign Offs
Polonious records comprehensive statistics:

 

  • Accuracy
  • Timelines
  • Work load
  • Turnaround
  • Outcomes
  • Patterns and trends


All case data and evidence in one location. Reduced manual communication time with automated emails, texts, letters and reports. Reduce meetings, spreadsheets, file management, paper files and schedulers with one place to find all case information and documents. Generate logs and reports, and share them along with documents, updates and other case data via links automatically. This enables real time interaction with all parties involved. Full audit log of all interactions recording all changes and values prior to and after any interaction. Integration with data sources such as student, HR, and learning management systems.

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Image of an office, with a laptop and people having a conversation

Easy Implementation

Subscription or purchase price model

SaaS solution cloud based or onsite.

No desktop software required, just an internet browser.

Easy to learn and use interface.

“…Academic dishonesty violates the standards of our community, as well as the standards of the wider world of learning and affairs…”

Harvard College Honor Code

Need More Information on How we Can Help You?

Recognising And Minimising Academic Dishonesty With Polonious Systems

At Polonious Systems, we understand the importance of upholding academic integrity within educational institutions. That is why we provide software solutions to maintain integrity and identify cases of university misconduct. If you are looking to minimize academic university misconduct, Polonious software can help. We have put together a brief guide on how you can use Polonious academic integrity software to curb instances of misconduct at tertiary institutions.

What does university misconduct look like?

Academic dishonesty can arise in many ways, and students are becoming more creative in the ways they attempt misconduct. Here are a few common types of academic misconduct.

  • Cheating. Students may attempt to buy or exchange assessments or exams from friends or people online. They may also try to sneak answers into a controlled testing environment.
  • Fraud. Some students attempt to have someone else impersonate them to sit an exam, assessment, or online activity.
  • Plagiarism. Work that hasn’t acknowledged external sources has been plagiarised. Some students unknowingly also commit self-plagiarism, whereby they re-use their own work and resubmit previous assessments without the proper permissions or referencing.
  • Collusion. Unless given explicit permission, students can not collaborate to complete an assessment or help one another cheat. A student who provides another student with their assignment to copy from is perpetrating collusion.
  • Bribery. Offering or accepting bribes for admission or grades is a prime example of university misconduct.
  • Fabrication or misrepresentation. This type of academic dishonesty can happen when a student lies to group members about the work completed for a group task. Other examples of fabrication include students making up data or information and submitting fake Turnitin reports.
  • Interference or obstruction. It is labeled academic university misconduct to prevent another student from accessing resources or completing their work.

Why is academic integrity essential to tertiary institutions?

Academic integrity needs to be upheld for the benefit of the institution, the students, and the work created within the institution.

  • Uphold the reputation of the university. Academic integrity is an integral part of how people view the institution. The university’s reputation is what attracts high-quality teaching staff and brilliant students. It also enables students to graduate with confidence in their degrees.
  • Maintaining high standards. Many universities are proud of their prestige, which comes from the high standards they set for their students. Enforcing academic integrity ensures the caliber of work remains consistently high across the board.
  • Sets the foundations for learning. When essays, theses, and papers are written, their academic integrity allows us to see the path upon which students built this new knowledge. It gives credit to past academics and gives future academics the roadmaps to continue learning, growing, and developing ideas.
  • Protects the interests of the majority. Most students maintain academic integrity in their work. These students deserve to have their interests protected from those who wish to cheat the system. Detecting academic dishonesty early ensures these students looking to succeed can do so on a fair and equal playing field.

How to minimize academic dishonesty with Polonious

Polonious can help your institution identify and manage academic misconduct quickly and efficiently.

  • Automatically report and monitor complaints and breaches. Polonious API integrates with misconduct detection software to create and manage cases in Polonious.
  • Streamline cases from beginning to end. Polonious provides workflow processes that allow for the effective management of caseloads.
  • Opportunities to improve. With comprehensive analytics, Polonious provides academic institutions opportunities to strengthen policies and methods of teaching, learning, and training.
  • Detect trends and hotspots early. This software enables you to analyze the relationships and behavioral trends between individuals and organizations and identify misconduct trends as they arise.
  • Automation for improved efficiency. By automating communications, notifications, report generation, and repetitive administrative tasks, your academic investigations team will have more time to spend on each misconduct case’s complex elements. With less time spent on admin, you will find your case turn-around time improving over time.
  • Guarantee security. Polonious’ multi-layer security systems ensure that case details and identities of those involved will remain confidential.

If you need software to help you monitor academic integrity, contact Polonious Systems today

Since 2005, Polonious Systems have provided scalable workflow management and risk assessment software to businesses of all shapes and sizes. We are committed to staying ahead of technological advancements and providing advice and support with IT capabilities across insurance investigation, banking, private investigations, and education. We are renowned for our wealth of experience, professional conduct, and willingness to support our clients comprehensively. If you are looking for academic integrity software, contact the Polonious Systems team and find out what we can do for you.

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