• • Home
  • Undergraduate Study
• • Postgrad English
  • Postgrad Creative Writing
• • Research
  • Staff
• • News & Events
  • Contact Us
• • Resources for Current Students

Undergraduate Menu

Malpractice in Coursework or Examinations

The rules of the university and the examination regulations define in detail the definitions and penalties for dealing with malpractice.  You can find these on the university website.  It is important that you abide by these rules and don’t attempt to gain advantage by any unfair means. When submitting coursework, it must be your own work and any assistance must be correctly acknowledged.  Useful advice can be found at:

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/celt/celtweb/anti_plag_students_advice

In recent years the Internet has become a source for plagiarism malpractice; however, mechanisms for detecting such practice are also increasingly sophisticated.

Departmental Advice on Malpractice / Plagiarism:

Lancaster’s academic enterprise is rooted in a culture of trust and integrity, and this underpins all aspects of the institution’s teaching and learning strategy. Most students do not cheat – they are honest and hard working, and they rightly deserve the trust of their tutors. Cheating, which is a form of academic malpractice, is the exception not the norm.

But some students do cheat, in different ways and for different reasons. In order to be fair on those who don’t and to protect the institution’s academic reputation and credibility, procedures are required to reduce the likelihood of cheating, to detect when it is happening, and to deal with those found guilty of it.

The University’s Plagiarism Framework (and the sanctions within it) applies to all coursework submitted by students for examination by the University in all academic programmes other than research degrees.

Academic Integrity:
Core values of academic integrity (honesty and trust) lie at the heart of our academic enterprise, and they underpin all activities within the University. The University values a culture of honesty and mutual trust, and it expects all members of the University to respect and uphold these core values at all times, in everything they do at, for and in the name of the University.

Academic integrity is important because, without honesty and trust, true academic discourse becomes impossible, learning is distorted and the evaluation of student progress and academic quality is seriously compromised. Consequently, the University is committed to –

• defending the academic credibility and reputation of the institution
• protecting the standards of its awards
• ensuring that its students receive due credit for the work they submit for assessment
• advising its students of the need for academic integrity, and providing them with guidance on best practice in studying and learning
• educating its students about what intellectual property is, why it matters, how to protect their own, and how to legitimately access other people’s
• protecting the interests of those students who do not cheat.

Forms of Cheating:

Cheating, a form of academic malpractice, includes: cheating in examinations, plagiarism, duplication and false declaration.

Cheating in examinations: occurs when a candidate communicates, or attempts to communicate, with a fellow candidate or individual who is neither an invigilator or member of staff; copies, or attempts to copy from a fellow candidate; attempts to introduce or consult during the examination any unauthorised printed or written material, or electronic calculating or information storage device; or mobile phones or other communication device; or personates or allows himself or herself to be impersonated.

Plagiarism involves the unacknowledged use of someone else’s work, usually in coursework (written or oral), and passing it off as if it were one’s own. This category of cheating includes the following:

1. collusion, where a piece of work prepared by a group is represented as if it were the student’s own;
2. commission or use of work by the student which is not his/her own and representing it as if it were:
• purchase of a paper from a commercial service, including internet sites, whether pre-written or specially prepared for the student concerned
• submission of a paper written by another person, either by a fellow student or a person who is not a member of the university;
3. duplication of the same or almost identical work for more than one module;
4. the act of copying or paraphrasing a paper from a source text, whether in manuscript, printed or electronic form, without appropriate acknowledgement;
5. submission of another student’s work, whether with or without that student’s knowledge or consent.
6. Cheating in class tests, which occurs when a candidate communicates, or attempts to communicate with a fellow candidate or individual who is neither an invigilator or member of staff; copies, or attempts to copy from a fellow candidate; attempts to introduce or consult during the examination any unauthorised printed or written material, or electronic calculating or information storage device, or mobile phones or other communication device; or personates or allows himself or herself to be impersonated.

Fabrication of results occurs when a student claims to have carried out tests, experiments or observations that have not taken place or presents results not supported by the evidence with the object of obtaining an unfair advantage.

Deliberate and inadvertent plagiarism:
Some students who plagiarise do so deliberately, with intent to deceive. This conscious, pre-meditated form of cheating is regarded as a particularly serious breach of the core values of academic integrity and one of the worst forms of cheating, for which the University has zero tolerance.

Many students who plagiarise probably do so inadvertently, without realising it – because of inexperienced study skills, including note taking, referencing and citations. Many students (particularly those from different cultures and educational systems) find UK academic referencing/acknowledgement systems and conventions awkward, and proof-reading is not always easy for dyslexic students and some visually-impaired students.

However, ignorance of proper procedures or good practice in academic writing is no excuse, particularly if a student has previously been accused of plagiarism, advised to seek study skills help, and fails to learn the lessons.

Why is plagiarism a problem?
Plagiarism is a problem for four main reasons –

1. It involves unacceptable practices, particularly literary theft (stealing someone else’s intellectual property, and breach of copyright) and academic deception (in order to gain a higher grade)
2. It involves poor or careless academic practice (including poor note-taking and poor procedures for preparing academic work)
3. It prevents the student who plagiarises from knowing how well they have performed (by yielding a false grade), thus denying them the opportunity to learn lessons, improve their study skills, and improve their knowledge and understanding
4. If plagiarism goes undetected and unpunished, it effectively penalises and can demoralise those students who do not plagiarise

The University regards all forms of cheating as unacceptable, because they undermine the core values of academic integrity (honesty and trust). Each form of cheating is a breach of the University Regulations, and is liable to be pursued by appropriate disciplinary action.

A student who knowingly assists another student to plagiarise (for example by willingly giving them their own work to copy from) is guilty of academic malpractice, and will be dealt with under existing University Regulations.

It is essential that you reference all your sources in your written and oral assessed work. Failure to do so is plagiarism.  All instances of plagiarism are taken seriously and will result in the imposition of a penalty, possibly a very heavy one.

We reserve the right to ask students on all Part II courses with the Department to submit copies of their coursework electronically via Moodle, in order to use plagiarism detection software. Please only submit via Moodle as directed by your tutor, the course convenor or the Part II office.

What are the penalties for plagiarism?
Depending on the circumstances of the case, plagiarism can result in penalties ranging from requiring the student to repeat and resubmit the work for only the minimum pass mark, through the awarding of a zero for the work or the whole course, and, in the most serious cases, to exclusion from the university.

How is plagiarism punished?
The University has required procedures that we always follow. In the first instance the academic marker will define the plagiarism as minor or major. Minor offences include poor referencing, unattributed quotations, inappropriate paraphrasing, incorrect or incomplete citations, or up to several sentences direct copying without acknowledgment of the source. The academic marker (tutor) shall indicate and set aside the sections involving plagiarised material, and feedback will indicate which sections have not been marked and why. The marker will offer the student a meeting to discuss their mark and action taken.

In all cases where plagiarism is deemed to have occurred, the student will receive a written warning and details of the offence will be recorded by the Department and on your central record.

Three minor offences will be considered equivalent to one major offence. Upon identification of a possible third minor offence, the case shall be referred to the Department’s Academic Officer. If the student already has a major offence on their record, the case would usually be referred to the University Standing Academic Committee.

Where an academic marker defines an offence as major, s/he will annotate any plagiarised material and submit a report, including a hard copy of the source used by the student, to the Department’s Academic Officer. A major offence shall be defined as copying multiple paragraphs in full without acknowledgement of the source, taking essays from the Internet without revealing the source, copying all or much of the work of a fellow student without his/her knowledge or consent, submitting the same piece of work for assessment under multiple modules, and cheating in a class test.

In the case of a major or major-equivalent offence, the Academic Officer will give the student the opportunity to discuss the allegation in a formal meeting, having provided the student with documentary evidence beforehand (e.g. a Turnitin report or coursework annotated by the academic marker). The student is encouraged to bring a representative e.g. a friend, LUSU Officer or College Tutor, and the meeting will include at least one other person from the Department e.g. the Course Convenor, who will take a record of the meeting. After the student and his/her representative have been asked, temporarily, to withdraw, the panel discusses the student’s response to the allegations made and the appropriate action to be taken.

The Academic Officer will decide whether:

a) no offence has occurred, in which case the work will be marked normally.
b) a minor offence has occurred, and the work will be marked, setting aside the plagiarised sections.
c) a major offence has occurred, and the appropriate penalty will be applied without the use of discretion. This may involve asking the student to repeat and resubmit the work for the minimum pass mark. If the student fails to do this, a mark of zero shall be given. Serious or disputed cases are referred to the University’s Standing Academic Committee, which has the power to exclude (throw out) students.

The result of the meeting will be sent to the student in writing within one week, and to the Student Registry, which keeps a central record of offences. The Academic Officer also makes a report on the case to the Department’s Teaching Committee, informs all tutors, and, if necessary, reports to the Board of Examiners.

If the student does not accept the decision of the Academic Officer, s/he has the right to appear in person before the Standing Academic Committee.
 
How can you avoid plagiarism?

Note-taking and Referencing:
Be absolutely scrupulous in your note-taking and referencing. The notes you take as research for your assessed work (written and oral) should make quite clear where the material comes from (including page numbers). Your notes should also make clear both what is a direct quotation from your source, and what you have paraphrased.

In your essays, make sure that you reference all material that you have consulted. This includes all:

• Printed sources (books, journal articles, newspaper articles)
• Internet sources
• Direct quotations
• Paraphrases of material from your reading
• Allusions to facts and ideas you have encountered in your reading

Using other people’s ideas:
Of course, all ideas come from somewhere. BUT you will get credit for acknowledging the experts in your field, rather than pretending that their ideas were yours. Your tutors are interested in the way that you can use a critic’s ideas and quotations to build up or support your own argument – this is what literary research is about. Remember that plagiarism includes the following:

• Plagiarism from other students (in your own year, or other years, or from material in essay banks or essays on the internet)
• Plagiarism from all written texts. This includes newspapers and all material on the internet
• Plagiarism of recorded texts such as video or TV
• Plagiarism of spoken ideas (from lectures or interviews)

Examples of Plagiarism, and how to avoid it:
Using ideas, particular phrases, or whole sentences or paragraphs, whether verbatim or with changes of wording, without acknowledging them is plagiarism, even if you rewrite them in your own words, but here are some ways you can avoid doing this:

Below is an extract from Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), p.12.  This quotation is then followed by examples of the three main types of plagiarism (of ideas, of a striking phrase, and blatant copying) and advice on how to avoid them.

The fact that we always interpret literary works to some extent in the light of our own concerns – indeed that in one sense of ‘our own concerns’ we are incapable of doing anything else – might be one reason why certain works of literature seem to retain their value across the centuries. It may be, of course, that we still share many preoccupations with the work itself; but it may also be that people have not actually been valuing the ‘same’ work at all, even though they may think they have. ‘Our’ Homer is not identical with the Homer of the Middle Ages, nor ‘our’ Shakespeare with that of his contemporaries; it is rather that different historical periods have constructed a ‘different’ Homer and Shakespeare for their own purposes, and found in these texts elements to value or devalue, though not necessarily the same ones.

(a) Plagiarism of ideas:
The plagiarist wrote:
One reason why some texts have maintained their value over time is that the reader will always read the text from his or her own experience.

S/he could have avoided plagiarism thus:
As Terry Eagleton points out, the reason why some texts have retained their value over time is that the reader will always read the text from his or her experience (Literary Theory, p.12).

You can see how much better the legitimate version sounds anyway: your argument has been backed up by a good authority whom you could then go on to use to make your argument more sophisticated than the initial unacknowledged idea. The Bibliography (at the end of the essay) would have included Eagleton, Terry, Literary Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).

(b) The Striking Phrase:
The plagiarist wrote:
Different historical periods have constructed a ‘different’ Homer and Shakespeare for their own purposes.

S/he could have avoided plagiarism thus:
Different historical periods have, according to Eagleton, ‘constructed a “different” Homer and Shakespeare for their own purposes’ (Literary Theory, p.12).

Bibliography will be as above.

(c) Blatant Copying: Verbatim or near-verbatim copying of the critic’s statements.
The plagiarist wrote:
Of course, it may be, that many of us still share many preoccupations with the actual text; however it could be that we have not actually been valuing the same text at all even though we may think we have.

Or perhaps our plagiarist decided to rephrase it slightly (this is still plagiarism even if some of the actual words are different):
It is possible that many people still have similar concerns as the book has; but it could be that they are not prizing the same book even though they think they are.

S/he could have avoided plagiarism thus:
Eagleton claims that, ‘It may be, of course, that we still share many preoccupations with the work itself; but it may also be that people have not actually been valuing the “same” work at all, even though they may think they have’ (Literary Theory, p.12).
(Bibliography will be as above.)

Or, to avoid plagiarism, s/he could have tried a more sophisticated version that neatly shortens the quotation to what is really essential for the present argument and doesn’t waste words:
Eagleton claims that although ‘we still share many preoccupations with the work itself … it may also be that people have not actually been valuing the “same” work at all’ (Literary Theory, p.12).
(Bibliography will be as above.)

Points to Remember
If you feel you are doing something wrong, then check it with your tutor. S/he will be happy to give you guidance or set your mind at rest.

Remember that tutors will go to great lengths to track down source texts, and punishments for plagiarism are serious. Having a record of plagiarism on your file will affect any references tutors write for you.

If you follow the rules there is nothing to worry about.

Back to Contents

Previous: Undergraduate Assessment Regulations

Next: Referencing Your Work