Avoiding Academic Misconduct - Quick Tips

  1. Make sure all work you submit – essays, lab reports, presentations, exam answers, etc – is entirely your own work. You must not copy, translate, or lightly edit, someone else’s work, you must not have any other person, service or AI tool prepare your work, and you must not prepare your work with another person (except in specific assignments where it is clearly marked as a group effort).
  2. The point of assessment is for you to demonstrate to the marker that you understand the material. If the work you submit is not entirely your own, that is impossible.
  3. Avoid using lengthy quotes – your work must not simply be a series of quotes. If you do use quotes, make sure the full quote is inside quotation marks with the author, year and page number clearly indicated.
  4. If you are not sure how to reference or quote correctly, or have other concerns about your academic writing, check your course or programme handbook, Moodle resources, ask academic staff for advice, or Student Learning Development resources. Remember that you must reference all content you use or consult, including open-source programming code.
  5. If you are rushing to finish your work by the deadline, and do not have time to check it, remember it is always better to submit work late than it is to submit work containing plagiarism. You can also ask your School for an extension if there is a reason you cannot submit on time (for example, if you are ill or experiencing other difficult circumstances)
  6. Turnitin will take longer to generate a similarity score when many students are submitting in the same period, so you are advised to avoid leaving this too late. Early submission is recommended so you give yourself time to address any issues which are identified in the full report.
  7. Do not submit any assessed work to any Moodle other than the one to which it relates, even if you need in an attempt to get your Turnitin output quickly – this will cause Turnitin to identify plagiarism when you submit to the correct Moodle.
  8. There is no ‘acceptable’ plagiarism percentage so do not rely on Turnitin. Even a low score may be problematic, and plagiarism may still be present even if Turnitin has not detected it.
  9. In exams on campus, pay careful attention to the instructions. Listen carefully to the invigilator’s announcement before the exam starts. Never have a phone or any other device in your possession. Never bring notes unless you have been specifically told they are allowed in the particular exam.
  10. Even if you did not intend to commit misconduct, the work can still not be marked if it is not entirely your own.

The following will be considered as misconduct:

  • Copying text or figures from other places – online sources, books, articles, other students – without full quotation, citation, and referencing.
  • Closely paraphrasing someone else’s work and their secondary references so that it looks as though this are you ideas and that you have read the secondary sources.
  • Using someone else's work as part of a presentation (oral or written).
  • Getting someone else to do the work for you, whether this is a friend, family member or commercial service, including services offering 'proof-reading' for a fee.
  • Taking someone else’s work from any of the above places and simply changing the words around or replacing some words in a few sentences.
  • Taking someone else's work and making minor changes to coding or formulae within the structure of the original work.
  • Re-using work you have submitted yourself to this or any other institution, as you cannot be given credit twice for the same effort.
  • Using paraphrasing software to simply reword someone else’s work.
  • Taking someone else’s work in another language and translating it into English.
  • Using Q&A or homework sites such as Chegg to get the answers.
  • Using AI to generate your answers.
  • Working too closely with another student, including copying from shared notes, as this will lead to close similarities in your work.
  • Being found in possession of a prohibited item in an on-campus exam.
  • Starting an exam before the invigilator has announced the start, or failing to stop writing after the exam has ended.