05.4 Academic Integrity

Owned by Stuart J
Last updated: Feb 01, 2023 by Susanna
3 min read

The Principal writes,

“Moore College is a Christian academic fellowship. Our academic work occurs in the context of Christian discipleship. For that reason, honesty and integrity sit alongside humility, courage, empathy, fairmindedness, evidence-based argument, simplicity and conviction as intellectual virtues …. The academic rules and regulations against plagiarism are designed to protect intellectual property, i.e. to keep one person from passing off another person’s work as their own (either for academic credit or financial advantage) … When you use another person’s work, make use of their ideas, arguments or conclusions, and especially when you use their express words, you must acknowledge this … It does not ultimately matter whether the unattributed use of another’s work is intentional or unintentional. If another person’s work is used it ought to be acknowledged. If it isn’t, that is plagiarism.”

 

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism can take a range of forms.

Plagiarism basically means presenting someone else’s work as your own without proper acknowledgement. Common examples of plagiarism include copying, collusion, incorrect citation, and cheating. Plagiarism is one form of academic misconduct.

Plagiarism may also involve a breach of copyright. Copyright law requires that you acknowledge the source material that you use.

 

Academic & Assessment Resources

Check out the guides on the MOD under Academic Integrity and Assessment Resources. These will help you understand how to identify plagiarism and how to avoid it by developing good academic skills.

  1. Academic misconduct is a serious issue and penalties apply. The College’s Student Academic Misconduct Policy can be found at Policies (moore.edu.au)  

  2. Moore College uses Turnitin® to identify phrases that match phrases that it finds on the internet.

  3. When a student submits an assignment, Turnitin® generates an “Originality Report” which visually shows all matches of any text in that assignment that have been used elsewhere. The report also identifies the source and online location of that source.

 

4. See the Style Guide section of this handbook for information on how to correctly acknowledge another person’s work when you have referred to it in your assignment.

5. The Quick Reference Style Guide on the MOD provides a summary of this section and some examples.

6. Consult your tutor if you are unsure or don’t understand what is involved in academic integrity.

 

PLEASE NOTE:

  • The match(es) that Turnitin® displays may not necessarily be the source(s) that you used. Turnitin® simply returns the FIRST match that it finds. This may, or may not, match your actual source.

  • The Originality Report you see is exactly the same as the one the markers see. Please do NOT contact the lecturer/marker/tutor to explain your report.

  • Do not wait until near to the submission date and time to check the Originality Report. It is best to upload your draft a few days before the due date, to see if you need to make changes before your final submission.

  • You are allowed three resubmission attempts where the Originality Report will generate within an hour. After three attempts, you'll have to wait 24 hours before a new Originality Report can be generated.

  • If you submit the same paper more than once, the Originality Report may display a percentage match of 100%. Don’t panic if this happens, as your marker will be able to identify that it is matching with your own (previous) paper.