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Regulations, Policies, Procedures – students and staff

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This section has been curated by a range of stakeholders from across both academic and professional services teams to provide you with guidance and information of all the regulatory guidelines and policies that underpin all our teaching, learning and assessment for both staff and students.

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The University’s Terms and Conditions and Student Regulations

The University’s Terms and Conditions and Student Regulations cover a wide range of regulatory guidance as follows and all form part of the legal relationship between you and the University.  Click on the heading to jump to the section:

Academic Calendars

Admissions

Admissions includes application misconduct, application policy and university entry requirements. 

Appeals and Complaints

Visit the Appeals and Complaints guidance for regulations and forms. 

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Assessment and Awards

Visit Assessment Essentials for guidance and information on assessment and awards and associated policies and regulations.  

Conduct and Discipline

The Conduct and discipline guidance includes academic conduct, disciplinary, freedom of speech, Prevent Duty, Fraud and anti-corruption. Take a look at:

What is contract cheating?

Contract cheating and, more broadly, what Phillip Dawson (2021) calls ‘cognitive offloading’ is where students ask other people or, in some cases, artificial intelligence, to create assignments for them.  Students can also purchase and trade ready-made answers, custom answers or notes and reflective case studies through a variety of commercial and informal routes. 

If you want to find out a bit more about this, just have a look for your module or your assignments on sites such as StuDocU, Chegg and Fiverr; or Google one of your recent assignment or exam questions and see what turns up. 

Using TurnItIn and Authorship

 

Although TurnItIn is helpful for tracking conventional types of plagiarism, the normal originality report does not help with allegations of contract cheating, where work is original but created by someone other than the student who has submitted it.  However, we now have an additional service as part of our TurnItIn license called Authorship which compares all the work a student has submitted to TurnItIn and creates a set of indicators that might flag a risk for contract cheating. 

The Authorship reports have to be generated by the team in Student Experience, Teaching and Learning.  If you suspect there is a problem with an assignment submission related to contract cheating and you would like us to help you investigate it by generating a report through Authorship, you can contact us by email.  Please include a paper ID number from TurnItIn.  You don’t need to include a copy of the student’s work if they have uploaded it to TurnItIn already, but if the student has not uploaded the work to TurnItIn already, you will need to supply us with a Word document or with the full student ID, and the module information.  In the first instance, please contact Jill LeBihan on j.lebihan@shu.ac.uk.

More support available for you

 

We can also offer training sessions for staff on how to identify cheating and bring an allegation; on how to understand the regulations and become a panel member on an Academic Conduct panel; and on good practice for assessment design to help build a culture of academic integrity.  Please contact Jill LeBihan j.lebihan@shu.ac.uk  if you would like more information on bespoke training sessions for your academic teams.

In addition, there are many useful resources on identifying different types of plagiarism and other kinds of cheating that might help you.  Here are a few helpful ones:

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Enrolment

Enrolment is the process during which new students become members of the university and returning students re-confirm their membership. New students will receive an enrolment invitation email two weeks before their course starts, following completion of their application by the Admissions team. This guides them to the Welcome pages, as below, to get started. Returning students receive their re-enrolment invitation on a staggered basis, as assessment boards conclude and administrative teams progress students to their next year of study.  

Hallam Welcome – Enrolment Guidance for Students

New students are guided, in their enrolment invitation email, to the Hallam Welcome portal, with sections covering enrolling, preparing and exploring, as students begin their Hallam journey. In the enrolment area they will find useful guidance to help them navigate this vital step. Once enrolled, students will be guided to recommended activities and next steps, and can also refer to guidance from the International Experience Team to get started. Students now have access to the information they need, when they need it, and with a greater coherence and sense of ‘Hallam’ identity in their on-boarding. Academic colleagues receiving questions about enrolment may wish to use the template response available on the Enrolment SharePoint page.

Enrolment Infographics

A high level overview of student numbers at different stages of enrolment for undergraduate, postgraduate taught, postgraduate research, apprenticeships and other courses can be found on our Enrolment Infographic on The Source – Enrolment Infographic

Enrolment Help

We have a new email address for staff and students to contact us. Our contact details are:

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)

For all EDI regulations, policies, inclusive practice guidance and information visit Academic Essentials: Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) overview page. 

Examinations and Coursework

For all details of examinations and coursework at the University visit Academic Essentials: Support for course and module design and delivery overview page.   

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Fees

The Fees guidance includes student fees regulations and tuition fee debts. 

Health and Safety

Visit Academic Essentials: support for course and module design and delivery overview page – Campus Teaching section. For guidance and information being on campus including policies.

Illness and Difficult Circumstances

The Illness and Difficult circumstances guidance is aimed at students on how they can manage the impact of difficult circumstances on their studies. Also take a look at Academic Services: Extenuating Circumstances guidance that covers requests to extend a submission deadline (RESD) and requests to repeat an assessment attempt (RRAA).

Intellectual Property

The Intellectual property guidance provides the student intellectual property regulations. 

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IT

Visit Academic Essentials: Digital Capability, Skills and Support overview page for all your IT information and resources including policies.

Research Degrees

Visit Academic Essentials: academic induction, roles, work-planning and careers framework overview page for details of policy and other research related support and guidance.  

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Human Resources and Organisational Development (HROD)

Visit Academic Essentials: Academic Induction, Roles, Work Planning and Development overview page for all HROD guidance for staff at Hallam.   

Quality Framework

Visit Academic Essentials: support for course and module design and delivery overview page for all Quality Frameworks and guidance on design and delivery.  

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OfSTED

Visit Academic Essentials: Apprenticeships, Employability and Work-Based Learning overview page for OfSTED guidance in respect of HDA courses.  

Strategic Planning and Insight (SPI)

Strategy, Planning and Insight (SPI) supports the development, implementation and delivery of the University’s strategy.  Visit Academic Essentials: support for course and module design and delivery overview page for the team’s offer and management of The Source.

Governance, Legal and Sector Regulation (GLSR)

The Directorate of Governance, Legal and Sector Regulation (GLSR) offers information, advice and direction on corporate governance, assurance, legal and regulatory issues. It covers:

Governance and Secretariat

Governance and Secretariat: supporting effective decision making by providing policy and secretariat support to University Boards and Committees, such as:

  • Academic Board: provides regulatory oversight of academic governance, to offer assurance to the governing body as to the overall effectiveness of governance arrangements and to notify any significant concerns. 
  • Academic staff standing for election to the Board of Governors can be viewed on the Board of Governors SharePoint site

Health and Safety

The Health and Safety SharePoint site provides support for both students and staff. 

Information Governance

Information Governance: to ensure that the University manages data and information in a responsible and effective way in order to meet business needs, underpin University strategy and comply with all relevant legislation, regulations and codes of practice. This includes useful information around student personal data, responding to requests, verifying identify of students etc. 

Also visit the University’s Rules and Regulations website: Personal information and data protection guidance includes privacy notice, subject access request (SAR), data protection, HESA collection, student names and confidentiality, criminal records and retention schedule guidance and information. 

Data Protection Impact Assessment Training for researchers

DPIAs assess the impact of our use of personal data on our research participants.  They are increasingly required by funders, are an important legal compliance and accountability tool, and help us to plan the data lifecycle and reduce risks for participants. 

Legal Services

Legal Services: Offer a wide-range of services to the university including the Safeguarding of vulnerable groups

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Academic Services / Administration 

Visit Academic Essentials: support for course and module design and delivery overview page – for guidance and information on how they support academic delivery. 

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Schools for Higher and Professional Education (SHAPE)

To help facilitate the required work to successfully complete the Re-accreditation of several Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) courses, which are delivered collaboratively the Schools for Higher and Professional Education (SHAPE) resource SharePoint site has been created. There are five courses which were re-accredited by the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications (HKCAAVQ) in February 2021 and these are:

  • HWLS – sports and physical activity
    • BSc (Hons) Sport Coaching
    • BSc (Hons) Sport Business Management
  • BTE – service sector management
    • BSc (Hons) Events and Leisure Management
    • BSc (Hons) International Hospitality Business Management
    • BSc (Hons) International Tourism Management 

Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF)

The Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) is a national exercise, introduced by the government in England. It assesses excellence in teaching at universities and colleges, and how each higher education provider ensures excellent outcomes for their students in terms of graduate-level employment or further study.  Read more about the TEF on the Office for Students website.

August 2021

Please be aware that our permission to use messages around University of the Year for Teaching Quality and TEF Silver in our marketing material ends this month. This means that we should stop referring to both these accolades on any materials, including our email signatures, by the end of August.  Please remove University of the Year or TEF Silver logos where they are in use. 

July 2021

TEF: update on the development of proposals for the future exercise.

Additional sources of information

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Last updated: 26th May 2023 NB