How to avoid Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a form of cheating, by representing someone else’s work as your own or using someone else’s work (another student or author) without acknowledging it with a reference. This is a serious breach of the Academic Regulations and will be dealt with accordingly. Students found to have plagiarised can be excluded from the program.
Plagiarism occurs whenever you do any of the following things without acknowledging the original source: ? copy information from any source (including the study guide, books, newspapers, the internet), ? use another person’s concepts or ideas, ? summarise or paraphrase another person’s work.
How do I avoid plagiarism?
To ensure you are not plagiarising, you must acknowledge with a reference whenever you: ? use another person’s ideas, opinions or theory ? include any statistics, graphs or images that have been compiled or created by another person or organisation ? paraphrase another’s written or spoken word.
By understanding and using one of the referencing systems detailed in My Resource Centre on e-Communities, you will be able to avoid plagiarism.
There are three main referencing systems: ? the Harvard or author/date system; e.g. ‘Smith (1985) listed five key factors’ ? the Oxford or footnote system, e.g. ‘Smith listed five key factors1’ ? the use of end notes in place of footnotes.
For further information on referencing please refer to My Resource Centre on e-Communities.
Collaborating with other students
When submitting your assignment online, you will be asked whether you have collaborated with any other students in preparing your assignment. If you have done so, you must inform the marker of your assignment by recording the name(s) of any such student(s) in the box provided. You must also make a declaration that the work you are submitting is entirely your own.
What are the penalties?
The penalties for plagiarism are: ? deduction of marks, ? a mark of zero for the assignment or the unit, or ? exclusion from the program.
Plagiarism is dealt with on a case-by-case basis and the penalties will reflect the seriousness of the breach.
Please note: claiming that you were not aware of need to reference is no excuse.