Donald McGillivray, 18 Sept 2012

Academic Discipline

Who Does What?

• Iain Ramsay, Chair, School Discipline Committee From Jan 2014, Per Laleng

• Sam Betts, Secretary to the Committee

klsdiscipline@kent.ac.uk

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Sources

• Credit Framework for Taught Programmes

• Annex 10: Academic Discipline: Procedures http://www.kent.ac.uk/teaching/qa/credit-framework/creditinfoannex10.html

• Useful source ---KLS moodle ‘Law Student Guide’ ‘essential resources on academic integrity and academic offences’.

• Guide for staff on academic integrity http://www.kent.ac.uk/ai/staff/ Includes guidance on avoiding plagiarism in assessment design etc: Guidance on using Turnitin Case studies and other guidance

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What is a Breach of Academic Discipline?

• Cheating in exams / influencing examiners

• Plagiarism

reproducing in any work submitted for assessment or review (for example, examination answers, essays, project reports, dissertations or theses) any material derived from work authored by another without clearly acknowledging the source

• Duplication of materialreproducing in any submitted work any substantial amount of material used by that student in other work for assessment, either at this University or elsewhere, without acknowledging that such work has been so submitted

• Conspiring to reproduce the work of others (improper collaboration)KLS Guidance – ‘talk and think together but write separately’

• Falsification of date / evidence

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Warnings and penalties

• Warning about future conduct – not disclosed to SRA

• Formal warnings Work essentially marked for ‘original content’ ‘Normally’ to be coupled with a resubmission opportunity

• But this may be difficult to offer in practice Are not mentioned in references / transcripts

• But SRA requires disclosure

• Minor offences Dealt with by the Chair of the SDC alone Maximum penalty – mark of 0%

• Serious offences Require a panel of 3 academics to sit as the SDC Max penalty – termination of registration

Stage 1 Students

• May be issued with a written warning if there is no intent to deceive, the extent is not significant and it is a first breach

Warning re future conduct applied in KLS to get round the ‘SRA problem’

• Failing to warn (or penalise) in Stage 1 may just defer problems to later Stages, where warnings are less likely to be given and penalties may be imposed

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KLS procedure (II)Please……

• Try to speak with the student first. If you cant, tell them you are referring.

• Tell us why you are referring the work No need to supply the turnitin report – we can do this. But please supply

anything else that is helpful, with annotations if appropriate

• Give the work a mark for original content (if above 0) It is not your responsibility to propose a penalty – this is for the

SDC But the SDC cannot mark the work for merit

• Pass to Sam

Procedure (III)

You do not need to:

• engage the module convenor (unless e.g. in a difficult or borderline case you wish to)

• If you do refer a problematic case to the convenor but do not receive a swift reply, just refer to us with a note telling us – we will liaise with the convenor

• Provide copies of any work copied from (unless you feel that the SDC would not be able to access this easily either from Turnitin or from URLs you provide)

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Engaging the student

• Try to contact the student to discuss your concerns before you submit a case sheet

This may of course be difficult over vacations etc – do not unduly delay submitting a case sheet because you are waiting to hear from the student

• We advise that you email the student outlining your concerns and asking for a response, either via email or in person.

You might, if discussing the issue directly, remind the student that admission or denial is a relevant factor in deciding the appropriate penalty

• If you have concerns not flagged by Turnitin you may discuss in detail the student’s work – can they explain particular phrases, concepts or words they used? Can they show you their notes? How did they access a copy of a source not available through the library? etc

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One student’s work similar to another

• Student’s work may strongly match another student from their cohort, or a student from a previous year

• KLS Guidance – ‘talk and think together but write separately’ www.kent.ac.uk/law/currentug/documents/groupwork.rtf

• The student from the previous year may be the student (repeating) resubmitting their own work

This is still plagiarism, but unlikely to attract a very serious penalty

• Where the work matches, raise the allegation against both (or all) students if you know who they are (if you dont we can identify the other student and raise the other case)

The SDC may receive representations and may (with an informal warning) drop the allegation against a student whose work has been copied from and where an explanation is given

Purchased essays

• Students do use essay providers

• These providers give specific guidance to students on how to ‘cover their tracks’ – eg to take books out of the library that the essay refers to

• Bought essays may be somewhat off the point...

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Designing out plagiarism in assessment design

• This is strongly encouraged

• May be achieved, or aimed for, in diverse ways Through exams Oral tests or presentations Using problem questions rather than ‘old chestnut’-

type essays Asking students to analyse a very recent case or law

or issue

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FAQ

• Is it still plagiarism to copy out the facts of a case? Yes, there is no excuse for this, but this will probably

be deemed less serious than non-attribution of ideas or analysis.

Students also need to develop the skill of summarising, in their own words, the material facts of a case, on the basis of actually reading the case.

• Does a bibliography ‘cure’ an absence of specific citation? No. Nor is it particularly compelling evidence that a

student did not intend to deceive, though it will be taken into account

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The role of Turnitin

• Turnitin is a tool to use to help you decide whether there has been plagiarism or duplication – it does not substitute for your judgement

• Turnitin will catch matches between students work, though only the work submitted second (tell us about both)

• A high Turnitin score may arise from using a high degree of quotation or primary sources. This makes the students work derivate or overly descriptive, but is not plagiarism (you can select ‘omit material in quotes’)

• A very low Turnitin score may also raise suspicion – essay writing services will produce work which does not have a significant score

• In all cases, use your judgement

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Mark reduction v penalty

• Full and proper referencing is one aspect of the quality of a student’s work

• If you don’t raise an allegation but tell a student that their work is poorly referenced, you can of course reflect this in your mark

• But penalties – beyond reductions for poor practice - are for the SDC