What is Plagiarism?
Plagiarismcanbedefinedastheunacknowledgeduseoftheworkofothers asifitisyourownoriginalwork.Plagiarismisalsothefailuretonotcredit correctlytheworkof others.It is,however,wrongtopresent thesewords andideasasiftheyareyourown.
Impact
Plagiarismisunethicalandillegal
Questions the integrity of the person who intentionally plagiarized theworkofsomeoneelse.
Limitsthethoughtandcreativityofstudents
Limitstheunendingresearch
Learnersgetexpelledfromsocialgroups
Learnersgetexpelledfromcollege
Failuretoobtainthequalification
Losesthetrustofteachersandaffectspersonalbonding
Impactstheoveralleducationalexperienceofstudents
What constitutes plagiarism?
Copyingexactlysomeoneelse’swork
Takingillustrationsphotographs,diagrams,data,drawings,andweb pages
PurchasingessaysfromtheInternet
Notputtingquotationsinquotationmarks
Altering words but copying the sentence structure of a source withoutgivingcredit.
How to avoid Plagiarism?
Bycitingandacknowledgingsourcescorrectly.
Piecesoftextshouldbewritteninyourownwords,youshouldthen citeyoursources
Citeyoursourcestoavoidgettingconfusedlater
Ensuretofindtheoriginalsourceoftheinformation(manywebsites plagiarise)
If you are in doubt, then cite. It is far better to have too many citationsthantoofew
Theuseofsynonymsoralternativewordchoicesisnotanexcuseto justifyplagiarism.
Ifindoubt,askyourtutorforadviceortocheckyourcitations.
Further tips
Takenotesinyourownwords.
Ifyouusetheideasofothers,thenbeexplicitaboutit.
Ifyouareparaphrasing,thenthepartoftheworkfromwhichthisis drawn from must be clearly indicated and a citation included in the textsothatotherscanlocatethesource.
Some tips on citing sources
When you are presenting the work or the views of others, ‘....as shownbyTredgold(2015)’
Ifyouarequotingasecondarysource,‘Bradt(2011)asdiscussedby Gillet(2015)’
When quoting text verbatim use quotation marks or indented text andacitation,e.g.“Nothingcanputthebrakesonateameffortfaster thanprocrastinatingondecisionmaking”(Nir,2014)
Ifyouhavecollaboratedwithothers,thenmakeclearinthetextwho contributed which parts for instance; ‘Prof. A.J Berry provided the dataonequalityinTable2’
Where sources are cited include the full bibliographic reference, including the title, journal, volume and page numbers at the end of yoursubmittedwork.
AttheSchoolofBusinessandTechnologyLondon,weprovidetwotypesof assessments - Formative and Summative. After completing a module, learners are expected to submit their assignment for the first formative feedback. The respective tutors review this, and detailed feedback is provided, which might ask the learners to improve/develop or rework their assignments.Once that is done, learners submit their assignment for first summative feedback, which declares a pass or fail of a module. The respectivetutorwill checkforanypotentialsimilarity ormisuseofAI and offer the learners summative feedback along with the similarity report. Learnersmustensurethattheplagiarismisbelowthethresholdof15%.AI isfurtherclassifiedtoLikelyAIandHighlyLikelyAI.LikelyAIthresholdis 20%andHighlyLikelyAIis10%.
Few points to remember here:
1. Learnersshouldnotcopyandpastedirectlyfromanywebsite,books, journalsorpublications.
2. Learnerstomaintainthesimilaritythresholdwithin15%
3. Ifthe15%similarityisfromvarioussources,thatdoesn’ttriggerany alarmandisokaytosubmit.
4. If the similarity percentage is 3% or above from a single source it ringsanalarmanditisnotokaytosubmit.Tutorswillasklearnersto reworkthesameandsubmititagainforthesecondsummative.Ifthe similarityreportisokay,learnerscansubmittheirworkonLMS.
Example: Evaluate the relationship between Management and Leadership.
Management is the process of planning and organising the resources and activities of a business to achieve specific goals in the most effective and efficient manner possible.
A learner wrote a 499-word essay on the relationship between management and leadership. Although the total plagiarism percentage was only 5%, it was found that the definition of management was copied entirely from an outside source without proper citation. Even though the total percentage falls within the acceptablethresholdof15%,copying27wordsfromthedefinitionof management without citationconstitutes100%similarityandisnot
acceptable. This indicates that the essay was not written correctly andshouldberevised.Ifyouarereferringtosomething,itshouldbe citedorreferencedaccurately.
5. SBTL tutors perform thischeck, and the report is shared only if it is alarming.
6. The alarmed work is shared along with the similarity report and learners are requested to rework and re-submit. If the similarity percentage is still alarming, then, learners are requested to rework for the second and final time and the assignment is submitted for final marking. If the similarity percentage is still beyond the threshold, it would lead to a straight failure. Moreover, should we find anything suspicious we will investigate further in line with our assessmentmalpracticepolicyandtakeactionaccordingly.
7. Please check our Plagiarism Policy and Assessment Malpractice Policyforreference