Student Handbook - ACADEMIC MALPRACTICE

Key Information:

Details of the procedures for dealing with Academic Malpractice are in Part 8 of the Academic Regulations - Undergraduate. These are available by clicking links above or via the University’s main website under Academic Quality and Standards/Academic Regulations.

Useful Links:

Academic Regulations - Undergraduate
Academic Malpractice

Description:

Academic Malpractice is treated very seriously by the University. For this reason students are given detailed guidance about how to reference the work of others and support in terms of developing good academic practice. Students who are suspected of Academic Malpractice will be invited to attend an Assessment Enquiry Panel. The panel does not seek to conclude whether the malpractice was intentional or not, it focuses on whether or not it occurred. Where Academic Malpractice is confirmed the outcome is reported to the Board of Examiners, which determines the nature and extent of the penalty to be imposed.

A range of penalties are available to the Board from lowering the grade, requiring re-assessment, withholding credit for a module. In recent years the whole range of penalties has been imposed. For the most serious cases this has included the withholding of a degree award.

Academic malpractice is cheating which is defined as to ‘trick, defraud, deceive (OED)’.

ACADEMIC MALPRACTICE CAN TAKE A NUMBER OF FORMS, INCLUDING:

ACADEMIC MALPRACTICE RELATING TO STUDENT'S OWN WORK

Collusion: where a student works in a fraudulent manner with another (or others) being assessed independently (either wholly or in part) in the same module.

Commissioning: getting another person(s) to complete work, which is subsequently submitted as the student’s own work.

Duplication: the replication of element(s) of material in more than one assessment within the same institution or elsewhere, simultaneously or at some other time.

Falsification of data: where data have been invented, altered, copies or obtained by unfair means.

Plagiarism: to ‘take and use another person’s thoughts, writings, inventions as one’s own’ (OED).

Syndication: the submission of substantially similar piece(s) of work by two or more students, either in the same institution or in a number of institutions, either at the same time, or at different times.

ACADEMIC MALPRACTICE RELATING TO THE WORK OF OTHER STUDENTS:

Aiding and abetting: where a student assists another student in any form of dishonest academic practice.

Students are reminded that:

* all passages taken word for word from any source, whether primary or secondary (including websites), must appear within quotation marks or in an agreed appropriate manner;

* the sources of each quotation must be clearly identified;

* where a quotation from primary material has been taken from secondary work, without the candidate having consulted the primary material, acknowledgement must be made to both the primary and secondary source of the quotation;

* where a part of a secondary work has been paraphrased, this also must be clearly identified;

* any collaboration with other people on the project, or any other assignment, must be acknowledged.

To help counter what has been perceived to be an increase in plagiarism from Website based sources and other forms of malpractice the university (like many others) uses IT software to help monitor good academic practice. All students will be required to submit an electronic version of any written assignments on disk, along with their printed hard copy.