Macquarie University policies and procedures are accessible from Policy Central (https://policies.mq.edu.au). Students should be aware of the following policies in particular with regard to Learning and Teaching:

• Academic Appeals Policy
• Academic Integrity Policy
• Academic Progression Policy
• Assessment Policy
• Fitness to Practice Procedure
• Assessment Procedure
• Complaints Resolution Procedure for Students and Members of the Public
• Special Consideration Policy

Students seeking more policy resources can visit Student Policies (https://students.mq.edu.au/support/study/policies). It is your one-stop-shop for the key policies you need to know about throughout your undergraduate student journey.

To find other policies relating to Teaching and Learning, visit Policy Central (https://policies.mq.edu.au) and use the search tool.

Student Code of Conduct

Macquarie University students have a responsibility to be familiar with the Student Code of Conduct: https://students.mq.edu.au/admin/other-resources/student-conduct

Results

Results published on platform other than eStudent, (eg. iLearn, Coursera etc.) or released directly by your Unit Convenor, are not confirmed as they are subject to final approval by the University. Once approved, final results will be sent to your student email address and will be made available in eStudent. For more information visit connect.mq.edu.au or if you are a Global MBA student contact globalmba.support@mq.edu.au

Academic Integrity

At Macquarie, we believe academic integrity – honesty, respect, trust, responsibility, fairness and courage – is at the core of learning, teaching and research. We recognise that meeting the expectations required to complete your assessments can be challenging. So, we offer you a range of resources and services to help you reach your potential, including free online writing and maths support, academic skills development and wellbeing consultations.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The use of Artificial Intelligence is not prohibited. The use of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as OpenAI's ChatGPT GPT-4 (paid), Perplexity.ai (free/paid), Microsoft Copilot in creative mode (free), or Claude 3 Opus (paid) when working on assessments in this unit is permitted. These tools can complement your efforts on assessments and can assist with planning, research, and editing, but they must be used intentionally and with utmost care. Intentional and careful use of these tools may assist the quality of your final submission, but poor or reckless use of the tools can quite easily negatively impact the quality of your submission. You are fully responsible for any issues or errors arising from their use. If you are considering actively engaging with LLMs to assist in completing an assessment, then please read the following very carefully.

The Role of Generative AI in Teaching

Skilled and proficient use of generative AI is helping teachers to plan, prepare resources, communicate, provide feedback and document activities efficiently so it can be of benefit to learn how to use generative AI well. Using AI well as a teacher requires an expert understanding of learning theory and syllabus documents so you can devise the prompts that generate pedagogically strong output. AI tools such as Elicit and Consensus can help you find research papers and Notebook LM can help you create notes on those sources, but you need to read, think and thoroughly engage your mind with the text in those sources to learn enough to be a great teacher who is more efficient because you use AI. Use AI to help you:

• Build your knowledge
• Locate relevant sources for you to read
• Outline contrasting theoretical positions in the literature
• Suggest improvements to your writing
• Format classroom resources
• Brainstorm ideas
• Convert conversational speech recordings to succinct grammatically correct prose for feedback and parent communication
• Customise resources for individuals and groups in your class

If you simply asking AI to write sections of your assessment task for you, you will not learn what you need to know to be an effective classroom teacher and the parents and children in NSW schools deserve to have highly professional, knowledgable teachers in schools.

Acknowledgement

Transparency is an important part of academic scholarship. You must clearly indicate what parts of your assessment were generated by AI within the text and reference the genarative AI tools you used in the bibliography. Please use APA referencing style to cite and reference your use of AI. Most AI chat tools now include a sharing option that provides users with a unique URL and a title for each chat. This enable easy creation of an APA Style reference for a specific chat  following the author–date–title–source format used in APA Style references.

The four elements of author, date, title, and source that you need to include in your references to AI are: 

• Author: The author is the company responsible for developing the AI tool. Although these companies did not “write” the generated text in the traditional sense, the author element of an APA Style reference is broadly defined as who is “responsible for a work.” Whereas in some other references that is an individual author, editor, film director, or podcast host, here it is the organisation that created the AI tool. AI itself cannot be an author because it is not a living, conscious human who can give consent and promise to abide by the rights and responsibilities that come with authorship. For example, OpenAI is the author of ChatGPT, and Google is the author of Gemini.
• Date: The date in an AI chat reference is the specific year, month, and day on which a chat occurred or concluded.
• Title: The title is the title of the chat (in italic sentence case) followed by a bracketed description to clarify for readers the nature of the source; for example, “[Generative AI chat].” In most AI tools, users can edit the title of the chat, so before creating the reference, consider editing the title within the AI tool to be something descriptive and helpful for readers.
• Source: The source begins with the name of the AI tool, which can be general (e.g., ChatGPT or Gemini) or the name of the model (e.g., ChatGPT-5 or Gemini 2.5 Flash). The final piece of the source element is the URL of the chat.

Example Bibliography AI References

Anthropic. (2025). Claude 4 Sonnet [Large language model]. https://claude.ai/new

Google. (2025). Gemini 2.5 Flash [Large language model]. https://gemini.google.com

OpenAI. (2025). ChatGPT [Large language model]. https://chatgpt.com/

Within The Text

• Parenthetical citations: (Anthropic, 2025; Google, 2025; OpenAI, 2025; Perplexity AI, 2025)
• Narrative citations: Anthropic (2025), Google (2025), OpenAI (2025), and Perplexity AI (2025)

Documenting AI Prompts

An AI prompt is the instruction that you give AI to generate results. Providing information about prompts increases transparency and helps readers better understand exactly how you used the AI tool. Prompts can be within the text where the AI use is disclosed, or elsewhere as appropriate, such as in an appendix. 

An example of how prompts might be discussed within the text:

I provided the following prompt to Gemini (Google, 2025): “Please create an image of students in a classroom studying grammar concepts.” After reviewing the initial image created, I refined the images by adding more detail, asking Gemini to include more racial and ethnic diversity in the student population and specifying the age range should be adolescents.

Unacknowledged use of generative AI is a form of academic misconduct and will result in a score of zero for the task and possible disciplinary action by the university. Please note that spelling and grammar patterns commonly appearing in text generated by AI will be interrogated should they appear in students' submissions without acknowledgement.

CRITICAL: Confabulations, hallucinations, and fictitious sources

It is your responsibility to use Generative AI tools ethically and appropriately. Any fictitious sources contained in your submitted paper will result in a failure of the assessment, regardless of whether they originated from your own research, Generative AI, or a random webpage. This is not an academic integrity issue, but a matter of ensuring the accuracy and reliability of your work.

Remember, LLMs always sound confident but are not always correct (and depending on how the LLM is used may be very wrong). Proper prompting is essential for improving the quality of the results.

Vague responses

Poor prompting may lead to American-centric or vague responses that do not address the specifics of Australian curricula or school context. When using these models, it is your responsibility to thoroughly check all outputs to ensure they are relevant and accurate. Reliance on an LLM output without thorough oversight is strongly advised against.

A trap

Do not treat LLMs as search engines. Even those with web search capabilities (e.g., perplexity.ai, ChatGPT GPT+ subscription, Microsoft Copilot) may not search effectively. Ensure that all factual information you want the models to work with is well-contained within your prompts.

Recommendations

We strongly advise against using ChatGPT's free version, as it may lead to unsatisfactory results and is prone to confabulations. Use tools running GPT-4 or equivalent, such as Microsoft Copilot in creative mode (free with a throwaway account, not your MQ account). Avoid upsells from the LLMs and choose "creative mode" for GPT-4; "balanced mode" uses GPT 3.5.

School of Education Procedures 

In addition, the following policies and procedures of the School of Education are applicable in this unit. 

Attendance for Master of Teaching (Primary and Secondary) units 

Attendance at all synchronous activities, completion of non-synchronous formative/diagnostic class tasks and involvement in professional forums is compulsory as the Master of Teaching is a professional qualification. All students must meet the 80% attendance requirement.  

Activities completed during tutorials or on campus days are essential for building the core knowledge and/or skills required to demonstrate the learning outcomes of this unit and to meet the AITSL Graduate Teacher Standards. Attendance at all tutorials or on campus days is expected and the roll will be taken. 

Students are required to attend the tutorial in which they are enrolled. Any changes to tutorial enrolments must be completed officially through e-student. Please do not contact the unit convenor requesting a change. 

Electronic Communication 

It is the student’s responsibility to check all electronic communication on a regular weekly basis.  Communication may occur via: 

• Official MQ Student Email Address 

• The Dialogue function on iLearn 

• Other iLearn communication functions 

Infrequent Attendance Students 

Information about the dates of the on-campus sessions can be found in the university timetable. Creating your timetable - Enrolling | Macquarie University, Sydney (mq.edu.au) 

• The on-campus sessions are essential to student engagement and learning and attendance is expected. Failure to attend or to have an approved Special Consideration may result in a Fail grade for the unit.  

• Prior to the on-campus sessions, you should have read the prescribed readings and listened to the lectures. Summarise the main points and make a note of the key terms and definitions. Prepare any discussion questions of your own that you wish to share. 

• Please make effective use of the online component of the unit and access iLearn regularly. Keep up to date with listening to the lectures on a weekly basis. 

• Further specific details and any updates about times and locations will be posted on iLearn as an Announcement during first half of the semester. 

Fail Rule  

This unit is a part of a professional course listed on Schedules 2 and 3 of the Academic Progression Policy. This course has additional requirements that are applicable for the full duration of the course, including course-specific inherent requirements, Fitness to Practice requirements and other compulsory course requirements. It also has rigorous academic progression standards. Inability to meet these requirements may result in a withdrawal of offer of admission and/or permanent exclusion from the course in accordance with the General Coursework Rules. 

LANTITE 

In order to enrol in your EDST8240 PE Unit you must have met the standard for both the Literacy and Numeracy test prior to commencing the professional experience placement unit. Enrolling in EDST8240 while waiting for your results will not be accepted. 

Passing a Professional Experience Unit 

To pass a Professional Experience unit, students must achieve a satisfactory result for their professional experience placement AND achieve a satisfactory result overall for their academic assessment tasks in the unit. 

Professional Experience Unit Placement Expectations 

• Students must be able to present evidence of completion of several tasks prior to session census date (or as otherwise advised) in order to receive a placement for Professional Experience. Please check your email from the Work Integrated Learning (WIL) Office. Requirements are outlined here as well: https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/professional-learning/pl-resources/pre-service-teacher-resources/induction-for-pre-service-teachers/mandatory-pre-requisites-for-pre-service-teachers-participating-   

• Students must have submitted all written assessment tasks and/or associated unit component requirements prior to the commencement of the block. 

• Students who are completing a unit offered by another department are expected to inform and negotiate with that unit convenor about their professional experience block dates and to discuss how that unit's requirements can be met. For some situations, it may mean that you are enrolled externally for that unit so that your attendance for tutorials for that unit is not impacted.  

• Feedback from Tertiary Supervisors and/or Supervising Teachers is of a general nature. It is incumbent on the student to check the requirements of any assessments or bookwork prior to submission. 

• If a Student is identified as being in need of additional support for Professional Practice and/or Bookwork, the School of Education’s ‘Additional Support’ procedure will be activated. 

• Students may not be able to commence their placement until all alleged academic honesty breaches have been investigated and concluded.  

• The timing of placements can vary. For placements early in the Session, Fail grades may be approved by the University prior to the end of Session for students who do not meet the placement expectations of the Unit. 

Fitness to practice requirements 

• Macquarie University operates under a ‘Fitness to Practice’ model as specified in the University's Academic Progression Policy.  For this Unit, this means that, when undertaking a placement, a student is declaring that they are able to demonstrate professional competence, acceptable professional behaviour, freedom from impairment, and compliance with program specific requirements needed for a student to practice properly and safely throughout their Practical, Clinical or Professional program or unit. It is the responsibility of the student to determine whether they are fit to undertake a placement. Therefore, if a student is feeling unfit to undertake a placement, they should not do so. For more information https://staff.mq.edu.au/work/strategy-planning-and-governance/university-policies-and-procedures/policies/academic-progression 

Macquarie University provides a range of support services for students. For details, visit http://students.mq.edu.au/support/

Academic Success

Academic Success provides resources to develop your English language proficiency, academic writing, and communication skills.

• Workshops
• Chat with a WriteWISE peer writing leader
• Access StudyWISE
• Upload an assignment to Studiosity
• Complete the Academic Integrity Module

The Library provides online and face to face support to help you find and use relevant information resources. 

• Subject and Research Guides
• Ask a Librarian

Macquarie University offers a range of Student Support Services including:

• IT Support
• Accessibility and disability support with study
• Mental health support
• Safety support to respond to bullying, harassment, sexual harassment and sexual assault
• Social support including information about finances, tenancy and legal issues
• Student Advocacy provides independent advice on MQ policies, procedures, and processes

Please be aware that the Course Convenor may submit a CareMQ Report inviting the wellbeing team to contact you if you encounter particularly challenging circumstances during the semester. You may also contact the wellbeing team directly yourself 

• T:+61 (2) 9850 7497
• E:wellbeing@mq.edu.au

Got a question? Ask us via the Service Connect Portal, or contact Service Connect.

For help with University computer systems and technology, visit http://www.mq.edu.au/about_us/offices_and_units/information_technology/help/. 

When using the University's IT, you must adhere to the Acceptable Use of IT Resources Policy. The policy applies to all who connect to the MQ network including students.

It is important to reach out to the IT Support team via a Onehelp email or ticket as unresolved difficulties significantly impact others and everything we do to make sure the team knows about and resolves problems improves the university experience for everyone.