What is Academic Misconduct?
Academic misconduct, broadly speaking, is any action that gains, attempts to gain, or assists others in gaining or attempting to gain unfair academic advantage. It includes plagiarism, collusion, contract cheating, and fabrication of data as well as the possession of unauthorised materials during an examination.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is presenting someone else's work or ideas as your own, with or without their consent, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement. Plagiarism can be done either intentionally, or unintentionally, by not citing and referencing your work properly. It is very important to familiarise yourself with the Harvard referencing style used by UCA, as if you are not correctly referencing your assignments, you could unintentionally commit plagiarism.
Essay Mills
Essay mills, or “essay factories”, are businesses that offer a service to write an essay or term paper for students for a fee. These are not your basic proofreading or editing services, but businesses where essays are written for you. Essay mills are illegal - it is a criminal offence to provide or arrange essay mill services for students. They may say that it is a legitimate service, however, it is highly common for students who use essay mills to get caught out and accused of academic misconduct. Using an essay mill is committing academic fraud, so it is very important to avoid these services at any cost and make sure that all work you submit is produced by you.
Collusion
Collusion is when there is unauthorised cooperation between a student and another person in the preparation and production of work which is presented as the student's own. This is a serious offence, and you could be accused of collusion if:
- During work for an individual assignment, you work on it with one or more students and the work you hand in is almost identical.
- During work for an individual assignment, you work together with one or more students to plan, prep and discuss the structure of the assignment. Even if you complete your assessment independently, this joint prep work could lead to your assessments being very similar and this could be considered collusion.
While it is helpful to have a discussion about work with your peers, it is important to be careful and vigilant about how much you wish to work together. Even if you do not mean to commit collusion, you can be accused of it if your assignment is extremely similar to one of your peers.
The points system, penalties and appeals process
For full details of the points system, penalty bands, and appeals process, please refer to UCA’s Academic Misconduct Regulations and Procedures.