MENTOR HANDBOOK

student handbook

PLAGIARISM & REFERENCING

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Plagiarism is the act of passing off another person’s work as your own. All academic dishonesty is unacceptable. Students must not submit for assessment any assignment that is not referenced appropriately and not in their own words. They cannot copy and paste from the internet and just change a few words or swap the sentence around. This is considered plagiarism even if they reference their source.

Students cannot copy straight from the Learner’s Guide, even if they reference it. They must write everything in their own words. Sure this is hard sometimes, as there are only so many ways to say something, and we will make allowances for this. On the whole however, student assignments must be their own work.

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. It’s available in the Student Lounge.

We automatically submit all written assessments to a Plagiarism Checker online called OURIGINAL (formerly called Urkund). Educators are then provided with a report of the percentage of plagiarised work and detail on what was plagiarised and where from. There is no single definition for a set percentage of plagiarism that is ‘acceptable’.

Students do not receive this report but will be contacted if the percent of plagiarism is high, and after review, the Educator can see that the work is not their own. Ouriginal checks against all Learner’s Guides, the internet and other submitted assignments by students both with us, and other providers.

Plagiarism falls under ‘Academic Dishonesty’. All allegations of academic dishonesty will be dealt with (and penalised where substantiated) in accordance with the Student Misconduct Procedure. A summary of the penalties, which may be applied under these procedures, is as follows.

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

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

All other plagiarism will be categorised as low, medium of high, depending on the actual percentage of plagiarism after an Educator has reviewed the assessment and removed any incorrect tags of plagiarism.

This is between 5 and 15% of actual detected plagiarism. For a 1st offence, the assessment will be returned to the student for editing and it won’t count as their first attempt. It will be recorded in their student file however no further action will be taken. For repeated offences, the assessment will be returned to the student for editing and it will count as an attempt. A formal warning will be given and recorded in their file.

This is between 15 and 25% of actual detected plagiarism. The assessment will be returned to the student for amendment and it does count as an attempt. The student will receive a formal warning and it will be recorded in their file.

This is when we detect over 25% of actual plagiarism. The assessment (and therefore the subject) will be marked Not Satisfactory and require re-enrolment.

In the event of receiving repeated (2 or 3 depending on the level of plagiarism) formal warnings the student may be withdrawn from the course.

Students should ensure everything they hand in as part of an assessment is in their own words and they reference where they obtained the information from. Referencing does not automatically mean they are not plagiarizing, the only thing that ensures they are not plagiarizing is to write in their own words (unless they they obtained the information.

Students are required to reference ALL resources they access when preparing their assessments. 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 penalized 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.

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