Academic Honesty Policy

Introduction

The Academic Honesty Policy was formulated taking cognisance of the Standards for Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) 2015, specifically Clause 1.8, the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence. The College recognises that academic integrity is paramount to the value of the vocational education sector and learners’ development of skills and knowledge through undertaking formal vocational study.

Scope and Application

The Academic Honesty Policy applies to all learners enrolled in course programs offered by the College. The policy covers all acts of plagiarism, use of generative AI (artificial intelligence), collusion and cheating committed by learners. It also covers instances where these acts are committed or knowingly abetted by the College’s trainer/assessors or other employees.

Overview

The College’s primary purpose is the provision of quality vocational education and training programs to learners.

To specify the conditions under which the College will apply its Academic Honesty Policy to ensure the authenticity of learners’ assessment submissions.

The College will apply this policy consistently and fairly across all programs and any learner enrolled into a program at the College.

Policy

The College considers the assessment process is critical to the integrity of its qualification outcomes. For this reason, it takes plagiarism, AI generative work submission, cheating and collusion very seriously. Acts of Plagiarism, use of generative AI, cheating and collusion are breaches of learner conduct and will be managed and reviewed by College management.  Acts of plagiarism, use of generative AI, collusion and/or cheating may lead to disciplinary action and termination of the learner’s enrolment without a refund of fees.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Generative AI, (GenAI or GAI) is the use of artificial intelligence to generate assessment text response, images, videos or any other assessment material using a generative AI model (GPT, DALL-E or other tools/ platforms).

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the act of taking the ideas, writings or work of others and “passing off” or presenting them as the person’s own work without acknowledging the original author. Plagiarism is a form of fraud and entails violating the property of someone else. The College advises all learners that they must clearly state which ideas they have obtained from someone else and that superficial changes do not disguise their use of other people’s words. The College considers that a learner has committed plagiarism if they do not acknowledge the source of a direct quote or a specific piece of writing without a reference or acknowledgement.

Examples of plagiarism include:

1. Direct copying of one or more paragraphs, sentences or significant parts of sentences
2. A “copy and paste” of statements from a single source or multiple sources
3. Submitting work done in collaboration with others as the learner’s own
4. Copying or adapting another learner’s original work into a submitted assessment item.
5. Submitting work with responses utilising Generative AI (GenAI and GAI) partial or complete

Cheating and collusion

The College also considers instances of learners’ cheating and colluding to be unacceptable.

Cheating and collusion is:

1. Collaborating on assignments where this is not a requirement of the assessment
2. Copying all or part of assignments from another participant
3. Submitting the work of others or a version of work of others from previous courses
4. Acting with dishonesty in your studies and assessment work

Both cheating and collusion are acts of dishonesty.

The College’s expectations

When writing responses to assessment tasks, the College expects that learners will:

1. Write their own ideas
2. Draw on information from the unit’s learning support material and other relevant sources and write this in their own words
3. When writing a direct quote of another person’s work, use inverted commas around the quote and include information about where the quote was found, e.g. “Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” (1991, R. Dahl, The Minpins). Learners are not expected to provide a reference list at the end of their assessment.
4. Where a question requires quoting from legislation, regulation and codes or practice, learners may copy the relevant text as long as they reference it e.g. “The Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (the WHS Act) provides a framework to protect the health, safety and welfare of all workers at work. It also protects the health and safety of all other people who might be affected by the work.” WHS Act Qld, (2020). https://www.worksafe.qld.gov.au/laws-and-compliance/workplace-health-and-safety-laws/laws-and-legislation/work-health-and-safety-act-2011.
5. Where a learner is required to provide an explanation relating to legislation, regulation and codes or practice, their response must be in their own words
6. Learners are expected to complete their own work and not collude with others or copy or use other works.
7. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) is strictly prohibited. All work must be that of the learner upon submission.

Resubmission of identified plagiarism, cheating/collusion or AI work

Learners accept that after an initial warning, there will be a $50 re-submission fee per assessment that has been returned by a trainer/assessor or marked “Not Satisfactory” because of the identification of plagiarism, cheating /collusion or AI submitted work. Learners accept that assessments will not be marked until the $50 fee per assessment is paid. Continued submission of plagiarism, cheating/collusion or generative AI submitted work will result in the termination of the learner’s enrolment without refund.