Plagiarism, collusion and cheating (assessment offences)

At Warwick, we take academic integrity very seriously. Any plagiarism, cheating or collusion activities may result in your failing your assessment and in serious cases, failing your degree. Whilst you are able and allowed in open book assessments to refer published or prepared resources unless otherwise indicated, you are NOT allowed to work with anyone else on your assessments. This includes other students, family, friends or anyone else. Only where the assessment explicitly asks you to work with others this is allowed.

Within the Alternative Exams Portal you will be asked to tick a box to indicate that you have read and understood our academic integrity expectations. See more information on Academic Integrity.

Before you start your assessment, you will first be asked to agree to the academic integrity statement. You have to tick the box before you can proceed. Do read it carefully and take note of the seriousness of this statement.

It is vitally important that you respect this commitment to honesty, and that you do not represent another person’s work as your own, or enable anyone else to do so.

To deter and detect academic dishonesty the University has instituted a number of mechanisms within online assessment processes. You may be asked to do one or more of the following:

• upload not just your final work but also one or more drafts, e.g. drafts saved at the halfway point and when three-quarters of the allotted time has passed. Your lecturer may also ask you to use ‘track changes’ in Microsoft Word;
• discuss your assessment, your approach, process and answers with the module convener in a 'sampling conversation'. Convenors may contact up to 10% of students within 24 hours of the submission deadline;
• upload a picture of the handwritten notes that you have made during the assessment (particularly for file-based assessment);
• integrate a more personal element into the assessment;
• write a paragraph at the end of the assessment reflecting on how you approached the assessment and what resources you used to inform your approach.

Your department will continue to make use of plagiarism and cheating detection tools such as Turnitin. Other approaches may also be used.

It is essential that you comply with these requirements which have been introduced to maintain the academic rigour and integrity expected of an institution such as Warwick. If you do not comply with these, your department may decide to instigate any of the available actions as stipulated within the provisions of Regulation 11.