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Academic Support - Educational Development

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Plagiarism

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Plagiarism Overview

Plagiarism is a very serious offence and defined by Bournemouth University as:

  • the direct importation into one's work of more than a single phrase from another person's work without the use of quotation marks and identification of the source;
  • making a copy of all or part of another person's work and presenting it as one's own by failing to disclose the source;
  • making extensive use of another person's work, either by summarising or paraphrasing it merely by changing a few words or altering the order of presentation, without acknowledgement;
  • the use of ideas of another person without acknowledgement of the source, or the submission or presentation of work as one's which is substantially the ideas or intellectual data of another.

JISC Plagiarism Advisory Service defines plagiarism as:

"....the presentation of someone else's work as though it were your own."


How can plagiarism be reduced?

Both staff and students have responsibilities where Plagiarism is concerned:

Responsibilities are to: Opens in a new window

  • ensure students are well informed about the consequences of Plagiarism and ensure the University Assessment Regulations are adhered to
  • educate students about how to cite correctly [Citing References]
  • be aware of staff and student workshops that are held to support the issues of Plagiarism
    [Details of EDS workshops] |[Details of Staff Development workshops] | [Details of Study Support workshops]
  • consider alternative assessment tasks with multiple solutions or modify those already in existence
  • ensure the assessment is constructively aligned with the intended learning outcomes of the unit
  • consider using the deterrent tool 'Safe Assign' within myBU and ensure students are informed that the tool is there to 'help not hinder'.

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Are there any tools for assisting in the detection of plagiarism?

One of the myBU features is an integrated plagarism tool called SafeAssign.

"SafeAssign is a plagiarism prevention tool that allows you to protect the originality of work and creates opportunities to educate students on proper attribution and citations against a wealth of information from industry leading databases.

  • SafeAssign allows users to run a comprehensive comparison against internet resources, the global reference database, institutional documents and professional databases to question the originality of students work.
  • Originality reports are available to ensure a fair consistency when evaluating assignments. " (Blackboard, 2008)

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What to do if plagiarism is detected

The discovery of plagiarism will be a staged process and defined by the Academic Offences Procedure.

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Resources

Bournemouth University Resources External Resources External Links

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