Plagiarism Misconduct

Medilife Institute is committed to ensuring a great learning experience for its learners. It aims to provide a learning environment that fosters the qualities of independent learning and academic integrity.

This policy seeks to encourage ethical conduct and to inform staff and learners about Medilife Institute standards of academic behaviour. Learners have a responsibility to maintain the highest standards of academic integrity in their work. Learners must not cheat in assessment and must ensure that they do not plagiarise.

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is the act of misrepresenting as one’s own original work the ideas, interpretations, words or creative works of another. These include published and unpublished documents, designs, music, sounds, images, photographs, computer codes and ideas gained through working in a group. These ideas, interpretations, words or works may be found in print and/or electronic media^[1].

Academic integrity

One of the core functions of Medilife Institute is to develop learner’s ability to apply critical reasoning to assessment activities through independent thought and to make decisions that reflect the learner’s considerations of the task or workplace requirement.

Medilife Institute acknowledges that to develop this ability, the learner will study the work of others via issued textbooks, learning material or through their own research. However, it is important that learners in their learning acknowledge, through appropriate referencing, earlier work from which they have drawn information.

Referencing

Referencing demonstrates that the learner has read the issued material or has undertaken their own research in other sources. Failure to reference appropriately is considered unethical academic behaviour and will result in a learners work not being accepted.

Learners should understand that assignment and project work submitted for assessment must consist of original effort. It is insufficient to simply copy work from other sources and submit it, even if those sources are appropriately acknowledged. Work submitted by a learner must have an original component.

The following are examples of plagiarism where a learner intentionally does not acknowledgement or reference an author or source:

Direct copying of paragraphs, sentences, a single sentence or significant parts of a sentence;
Direct copying of paragraphs, sentences, a single sentence or significant parts of a sentence with an end reference but without quotation marks around the copied text;
Copying ideas, concepts, research results, computer codes, statistical tables, designs, images, sounds or text or any combination of these;
Paraphrasing, summarising or simply rearranging another person’s words, ideas, etc., without reference or explanation.
Offering an idea or interpretation that is not one’s own without identifying whose idea or interpretation it is;
A ‘cut and paste’ of statements from multiple sources;
Presenting as independent, work done in collaboration with others;
Copying or adapting another learner’s original work into a submitted assessment item.
Copying or adapting a learner’s own work submitted in a previous essay or assessment.
Alternatively, there will be instances when a learner unintentionally fails to cite sources or to do so adequately.

Careless or inadequate referencing or failure to reference will be considered poor practice. Where careless referencing is identified, the learner will be required to correct the error and resubmit an assignment.

How to reference

At Medilife Institute, learners are to be encouraged to apply the Harvard Referencing System in-text citation. This approach requires three pieces of information about a source within the text of the learners work. This information is:

the name of the author or authors
the year of publication
the page number

Examples

Citations may be placed at the end of a sentence (before the concluding punctuation) in brackets, eg:

To succeed, the team will rely on both task process and group process (Dwyer, Hopwood 2010, p. 239)

A reference may be placed in the text to integrate the author’s surname into the sentence, followed by the year of publication and page number, in brackets, eg:

Dwyer and Hopwood (2010, p. 239) identify that to succeed, the team will rely on both task process and group process.

Reference List

At the end of the learners work, a List of References must be included. This should include all the books, journal articles and other sources of information you have used to research your assignment. The reference list should be laid out alphabetically and the title of the source should be italicised. Each reference must include:

the name of the author or authors
the year of publication
the title of the publication
the edition of publication
the publisher
place of publication

Example

Dwyer, J and Hopwood, N, 2010, Management Strategies and Skills, Sydney, McGraw Hill Australia

Common Knowledge

In every field, there is a body of knowledge and material that has become part of the public domain and which can be drawn on without specific acknowledgment. Common knowledge includes facts that are generally known, such as common facts of history, common sense information, accepted folklore and aphorisms that have been adopted as part of common English language.

As examples, it would not be necessary to reference the following:

That John Howard was the Prime Minister of Australia (common fact of history)
That humans need food and water for survival (common sense observation)
That the “Bunyip” is a man-eating Australian animals that live in water-holes, swamps and creeks (accepted folklore)

Cheating

Cheating is defined as “a form of deceit with a view to gaining an advantage for the cheat.” At Medilife Institute, cheating is usually related to taking unauthorised material into assessments. Medilife Institute Trainers have a responsibility to explain clearly expectations related to any assessment, what constitutes cheating, and to promote a climate of honesty in learners.

Plagiarism Procedure

Staff responsibilities

Medilife Institute staff are responsible to:

Inform all learners of expectations related to assessment;
Inform all learners of referencing techniques and provide clear examples of what is acceptable;
Explain to learners what constitutes plagiarism;
Set realistic assessment activities and vary assignments and questions;
Assist learners to understand and apply correct referencing techniques;
Set appropriate conditions for group activities and make clear the distinction between group work and individual work; and
Cultivate a climate of mutual respect for original work.

Learner responsibilities

Learners are responsible to:

Submit only work that is their own or that properly acknowledges the ideas, interpretations, words or creative works of others;
Avoid lending original work to others for any reason;
Be clear about assessment conditions and seek clarification if in doubt;
Be clear about what is appropriate referencing and the consequences of inappropriate referencing;
Discourage others from plagiarising by observing the practices above.

Dealing with plagiarism

In the case of suspected plagiarism the staff member will report the incident to the Chief Executive Officer. The Chief Executive Officer, in consultation with the staff member will determine if the plagiarism has resulted from poor academic practice or was intentional. This preliminary step may involve an informal interview with the learner.

The Chief Executive Officer and staff member will:

consider the extent of the plagiarism (noting that the more extensive the plagiarism, the more likely it was intentional);
review the course profile and other information provided to learners by the Training Manager to determine if adequate information had been given;
identify if the learner has been previously warned of plagiarism; and
determine whether the learner is new to adult vocational education and training (it would be expected that continuing learners would be more likely to understand plagiarism and its consequences).

If the above factors have been considered and it has been determined that the plagiarism has arisen from poor academic practice, the learner is to be requested to revise the work and resubmit it for the assessment.

If, after consideration of the above factors it is determined that the plagiarism was intentional, the learner’s work is not to be accepted and the learner is to be issued with an alternative assessment assignment to complete. The learner is to be given a formal warning (in writing) by the Chief Executive Officer explaining the seriousness of the incident and the consequences if the learner is found to plagiarise again.

Learners who commit plagiarism after being formally warned are to be withdrawn from the program they are enrolled and issued with a refund of their tuition fees less all expenses incurred by Medilife Institute up to the point of their withdrawal.

Plagiarism Misconduct