Going to university might cause you to feel excited or overwhelmed - it doesn’t matter if you are a school leaver or returning to study after time in the workforce. Becoming familiar with what’s expected of you as a QUT student can help you to feel comfortable with studying at university. At QUT, we are committed to creating and fostering an environment that encourages and rewards academic honesty, and ensuring that you have clear guidance and assistance so you can follow the principles of academic integrity. This means that both staff and students 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 is interpreted as academic dishonesty or academic misconduct.
What are the principles at QUT?
As a QUT student, you are committed to maintaining high academic standards to protect the value of QUT qualifications for all graduates. In practice, this means ensuring that all assessment items are approached and completed with the highest standards of academic integrity. Any actions or practice 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 your own (plagiarism), including resubmitting your own work for another assessment item (self-plagiarism) or cheating in examinations.
Why is detecting and penalising plagiarism important at QUT?
If you plagiarise intentionally or otherwise in assessment items, you’re not providing appropriate evidence of the learning undertaken in the degree. Members of an academic community who plagiarise undermine the value of the knowledge generated by that community - it gives the university a bad name as well as the other students who attend. Allowing you to obtain a degree with plagiarised assessment lowers the overall quality of the University’s graduates and undermines the value of the qualifications offered and the achievements of other students.
What does QUT consider to be dishonest behaviour or academic misconduct?
1. Cheating in exams
This includes any action or attempted action by you where you might gain 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 your own. It may also include resubmitting your 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 your own work
- copying non-word based material (such as diagrams, plans or audio-visual materials) and presenting them as your own work
- using another person’s experimental results as your own or without appropriate acknowledgement.
3. Other forms
Other forms of failing to undertake your studies with academic integrity, including:
- giving or providing your work for sale to someone else
- misrepresenting, falsifying or fabricating data for an assessment
- using assessment materials from someone else (whether purchased or taken)
- using artificial intelligence tools in assessment unless specifically allowed to do so
- colluding (working very closely) with other people to produce an assignment and then submitting it as your own individual work
- collaborating (working on an assignment) with others where it is not authorised in the assessment requirements
Information in this section adapted with permission from University of Leeds (UK).
