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Academic Integrity Tutorial

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Cheating, Falsification, Recycling

Slide 5/17

Along with plagiarism, which has been previously discussed, cheating, falsification and recycling are all considered by the University to constitute breaches of Academic Integrity. Clarifications of what is meant by these terms are presented below. The material is also found in the University Calendar http://www.calendar.soton.ac.uk/sectionIV/academic-integrity-statement.html.

Cheating is any action before, during or after an assessment or examination which seeks to gain unfair advantage or assists another student to do so.

Examples of cheating are:

  • Gaining access to or using unauthorised notes or other material relating to an assessment;
  • Introducing any information, including electronically stored information into the examination room, (whether belonging to yourself or another person) unless expressly permitted by the examination or programme regulations;
  • Communicating during an examination with any person outside the examination room, or with other students within the examination room;
  • Copying the work of another student with or without their knowledge or agreement, whether in examinations or in other assessments;
  • Allowing another person to impersonate you, or impersonating another person, with the intention of gaining an unfair advantage for yourself or the other person;
  • Ghosting, that is, submitting as your own work a piece of work produced in whole or part by another person on your behalf, (eg the use of ‘ghost writing’ services), or deliberately seeking to make available material to another student with the intention that the other student should present the work as his or her own (Note: this does not include the use of an amanuensis in examinations, or legitimate input from University study skills tutors and/or mentors).

Falsification is any attempt to present fictitious or distorted data, evidence, references, experimental results or other material and/or knowingly to make use of such material.

Examples of falsification are:

  • Presenting data based on controlled investigations, experiments, surveys or analysis falsely claimed to have been carried out by you;
  • The invention of references and/or false claims;
  • Including data etc in your work which you know to be false or incorrect, whether or not this has been created by you;
  • In connection with programmes leading to a professional qualification, falsely claiming to have completed non-academic requirements such as hours in practice, or to have achieved professional competencies.

Recycling is where a piece of work which has already been used in one context is used again (without declaration) in another context.

Examples of recycling are:

  • Re-submitting work which has already been assessed and marked in full or in part for another assessment in the same or in a different course;
  • Failure to disclose that a piece of work was submitted for assessment and has been or will be used for other academic purposes;
  • Publishing essentially the same piece of work in more than one place, without declaration. In some instances it may be acceptable to use work previously submitted for a written assignment as the basis for an examination answer, or to further expand and develop such work at a higher level – eg developing the ideas formulated in your third year dissertation into a Master’s level thesis . Such situations would be governed by the specific regulations of the appropriate programme of study.

There may be other breaches of academic integrity which are not specifically referred to here and some breaches may fall into more than one category.