What is academic integrity at QUT?

QUT is committed to creating and fostering an environment that encourages and rewards academic integrity, and to providing clear guidance and assistance to students to ensure that they understand the requirement to maintain academic integrity .  This means that students and staff are expected to exhibit honesty, respect, fairness and trust, and act in a responsible manner when undertaking academic activities.  Breaking the principles of academic integrity will be interpreted as dishonesty. 

What are the principles at QUT?

QUT is committed to maintaining high academic standards to protect the value of its qualifications for all graduates. This includes supporting and assuring the academic integrity of assessment. Any actions or practice by a student which defeats the purpose of assessment is regarded as a failure to maintain academic integrity. This involves representing another person's ideas or work as one's own (plagiarism), including resubmitting one's own work for another assessment item and cheating in examinations.

Why is detecting and penalising plagiarism important at QUT?

• Students who plagiarise intentionally or otherwise in assessment items are not providing appropriate evidence of the learning undertaken in the degree.
• Members of an academic community that plagiarise undermine the value of the knowledge generated by that community.
• Allowing students to obtain degrees with plagiarised assessment items lowers the quality of the University’s graduates and so undermines the value of the qualifications offered and the achievements of the other students.

Plagiarism in academic work is detected in a number of ways:

• Markers are usually subject matter experts who will recognise the contributions of previous authors if they are presented inappropriately in submitted work.
• The writing style used in submitted work often provides signs where plagiarism has taken place (e.g. dramatic changes in language used from paragraph to paragraph).
• Electronic detection tools are now available that identify content matches with other sources (QUT uses a detection tool called SafeAssign). Your unit coordinator may require you to use these tools and to supply reports generated by them as part of the conditions of assessment for particular units.
• You can be asked to authenticate your learning on an assessment item (eg. through showing notes/drafts, resource materials used in the preparation of the item or by undertaking a viva or practical based exam).

Checking your work

• You are encouraged to make use of the support materials and services such as the QUT cite|write to help you consider and check your assessment items.
• Where available, use content matching software such as SafeAssign and submit generated reports as part of the conditions of assessment for your unit.
• Consult with your tutor/lecturer prior to submission if you are unsure - including interpreting reports from plagiarism detection software or checking the level of collaboration is permitted.

What is considered as dishonest?

Actions that are interpreted by the university as being dishonest include:

 

1. Cheating in exams

This includes any action or attempted action on the part of a student which might gain that student an unfair advantage in the examination.  Common methods of cheating include: Bringing unauthorised material into the exam Having access to unauthorised written notes during the exam Communicating with others during the exam Copying or reading another student’s work during the exam

 

2. Plagiarism

This involves representing another person’s ideas or work as one’s own.  It may also including resubmitting one’s own work for another assessment item.  Common forms of plagiarism include: Direct copying, summarising, or paraphrasing another person’s work without appropriate acknowledgement of the sources Using or developing an idea or hypothesis from another person’s work without appropriate acknowledgement Representing the work of another person as the student’s own work Copying non-word based material (such as diagrams, plans or audiovisual materials) and presenting them as one’s own work Using another person’s experimental results as one’s own or without appropriate acknowledgement.

 

3. Other forms

Other forms of failing to maintain academic integrity include but are not limited to: Giving or providing for sale one’s own work to someone else Misrepresenting, falsifying or fabricating data for an assessment Purchasing or obtaining assessment materials from someone else Colluding (working very closely) with others to produce an assignment and then submitting it as the student’s own individual work Collaborating (working on an assignment) with others where it is not authorised in the assessment requirements

These rules can be found at MOPP C/5.3, QUT's manual of policies and procedures.

Information in this section adapted with permission from University of Leeds (UK).