What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is the use of another person's work or idea and/or manner of expressing them as if it were your own by failing to give appropriate acknowledgment.

The submission of essays, assignments and homework is an essential part of the learning process and a vital way of assessing students' understanding of a unit. The submitted work must therefore be a student's own work. This does not mean that students may not make use of the work of others. However, in quoting or paraphrasing material from other sources, those sources must be acknowledged in full.

It may be useful to seek the help of a tutor, lecturer or demonstrator in preparing the piece of work, and to enlist the help of fellow students in sorting out ideas, but the final product must be written by the student in his or her own words.

Plagiarism occurs when students fail to acknowledge that ideas have been borrowed. Specifically, it occurs when:

• phrases and passages are used verbatim without quotation marks and without a reference to the author or a web page
• an author's work is paraphrased and presented without a reference
• other students' work is copied or partly copied
• other people's designs, codes and images are presented as the student's own work
• laboratory results of someone else are used without appropriate attribution,
• work for assessment are written in conjunction with other students (without prior permission of the relevant staff member), and
• lecture notes are reproduced without due acknowledgement.

It is acknowledged that students will assist each other with problems associated with their studies and discuss issues with each other. All assigned work, however, must be undertaken by students independently, and students must not work in groups unless specifically instructed to do so by the lecturer.

Cases of intentional plagiarism, where the student has attempted to obtain an unfair academic advantage in an assessment, will be reported to the chief examiner/staff member in charge of the subject. If plagiarism is determined to have occurred, the piece of work may be disallowed or referred to the faculty manager for investigation. Cases of plagiarism will be reported in accordance with the requirements of Statute 4.1 - Discipline. Students who are at all uncertain about what is required should consult their tutor or lecturer.

The following suggestions are outlined below to help students maintain academic integrity in their submission of work:

• students should take accurate notes, distinguishing in these between their own ideas and the ideas of other writers
• in notes, as well as essays, quotation marks should be placed around all material that is copied out directly and the source noted
• any idea that is not their own should be footnoted by students, even if it is paraphrased or summarised and does not appear in quotation marks, and
• even when receiving advice from fellow students, the final product should be formulated by the student himself or herself.

The university may use electronic plagiarism detection software to compare work submitted for assessment against various databases, which may include the World Wide Web, electronic reference materials and other student work submitted for assessment.