PLAGIARISM & REFERENCING

All work submitted for assessment must be your own original work. This includes writing in your own words and generating your own ideas. Any use of another student’s work, copying from the learner’s guide, textbooks, internet sources, or using artificial intelligence (AI) tools to generate answers constitutes academic dishonesty.

You should aim to thoroughly understand the course materials and articulate your response in your own words. While there are constraints on expressing certain established facts or concepts uniquely, the expectation is for all submitted assignments to predominantly reflect personal comprehension and expression.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the act of presenting another person’s work or ideas as your own without proper acknowledgment. This includes copying text directly, paraphrasing without crediting the source, and making minor modifications to someone else’s work. Even with referencing, simply rearranging sentences or changing a few words is still considered plagiarism.

Please refer to the ‘Plagiarism & Referencing Guide’ for instructions in what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. This guide shows how to properly reference in the Harvard style and how to pick appropriate sources of information.

We have also published a ‘Cheat Sheet’ showing examples of how to reference the kinds of resources students will access during their course.

Collusion

Collusion involves unauthorised collaboration with others. Sharing answers, working together on an individual assignment, or allowing others to copy your work all constitute collusion. Submitting work that has been prepared in conjunction with another student or individual without explicit permission is considered collusion and is treated as academic dishonesty.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Submitting answers or content generated by AI tools as if they are your own original thoughts is considered academic dishonesty. You must critically analyse and substantially modify AI-generated content, integrating it into your own analysis and properly citing it as a source if used. Using AI to generate answers with little to no modification is strictly prohibited unless explicitly allowed by the course guidelines. Submissions found to have been generated by AI will be treated as academic dishonesty.

Referencing

Referencing is crucial for academic work. It involves citing the sources of information and ideas that are not your own. Referencing does not absolve a submission from being considered plagiarised if the original text has been insufficiently transformed into your own words. For detailed instructions on how to reference correctly using the Harvard style, please refer to our ‘Plagiarism & Referencing Guide’ available in the Student Gateway.

Plagiarism Detection

We utilise Turnitin, a plagiarism checking service, to analyse submissions for originality. This system compares your work against a vast database of sources, including published material, internet content, and previous student submissions, and can also detect AI-generated text. Educators receive a report detailing the percentage of non-original material and specific sources of matched content. There is no threshold for an ‘acceptable’ level of plagiarism; each case is evaluated individually.

Students do not receive this report but will be contacted if the percent of plagiarism is too high and have it provided, and after review, the Educator can see that the work is not their own.

Consequences of Academic Dishonesty

Plagiarism, collusion and the use of AI falls under ‘Academic Dishonesty’. All allegations of academic dishonesty will be dealt with (and penalised where substantiated) in accordance with the Student Misconduct Procedure.

If the alleged academic dishonesty is determined to be the result of genuine misunderstanding, we will allow the student to resubmit an edited submission. The student will still receive a warning for the instance, which is noted in their file.

Subsequent instances of academic dishonesty will not be treated as the result of a misunderstanding.

Plagiarism is categorised as low, medium of high, depending on the actual percentage of plagiarism detected after an Educator has reviewed the assessment and removed any incorrect tags of plagiarism. The level will dictate the action we take, from returning the assessment for editing, or marking it as Not Satisfactory.

In the event of receiving repeated formal plagiarism warnings (3), the student will be investigated for academic dishonestly under the Student Misconduct Procedure with the most severe consequence being withdrawn from the course.

Students are responsible for ensuring that all submitted work is in their own words and appropriately referenced. Even with correct referencing, the submission must substantially consist of your original words and ideas to avoid plagiarism. This include IN-TEXT CITATION as well as their REFERENCE LIST at the end of their assessment.

We recommend the Harvard method. If a student is more familiar with a different referencing style, such as APA, they can feel free to use this. Students will not be penalised if their reference formatting is incorrect, as long as the Educator can establish the source easily.

Refer to the Plagiarism, Researching & Referencing Handbook for detailed information on the requirements and how to reference. The Referencing Cheat Sheet will help students format their references for commonly used sources.