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If a student breaches Curtin’s expectations, it may not necessarily be misconduct. Sometimes the breach may result in the student receiving a warning about their actions or behaviour.
Curtin’s approach, where possible, is to warn a student in the first instance where there is a breach. Warnings are available for minor issues of an academic and general nature. Depending on the severity of an issue, a warning may not be appropriate. If there is a serious or repeated or breach, the incident will be escalated to an allegation of misconduct.
Guidance on how to manage warnings and alleged misconduct:
It is important that all staff report student conduct breaches. For more information see reporting and investigating.
Failing to provide a formal warning to a student may result in:
Curtin is committed to an educative approach to the development of academic writing and referencing skills. Every effort should be made to educate students on the academic integrity requirements for their discipline and to embed it into units at all level of the course.
Curtin recognises that students who are unfamiliar with the conventions of academic writing can sometimes unintentionally plagiarise or collude on assessments. This may happen if a student inadequately acknowledges resources or collaborates with other students when an assessment should be done individually. In these cases, an academic integrity warning may be appropriate.
An academic integrity warning is available for any student with a minor breach. It simply indicates that there has been a breach of academic integrity. An academic integrity warning may be used to assign a student an educative action. A warning may be given if there are insufficient grounds to continue investigation into a suspected case of misconduct, or if the actions of the student do not meet the threshold of a misconduct finding. Academic breaches that are more serious must be managed as misconduct.
The unit coordinator is responsible for ensuring that academic integrity warnings are lodged via the Dixon web form. If you have any questions, you can reach out to the Student Conduct Office at sco@curtin.edu.au.
For assessments within the designated academic integrity unit, a unit within a course in which information and instruction about academic integrity is provided, it is appropriate to:
When a student is undertaking a designated academic integrity unit, staff should provide additional support and guidance prior to any lodgement via the Dixon web form.
For example, if the first assessment item contains some inadequate paraphrasing or acknowledgement conventions, then the breach should not be immediately lodged.
The student should be notified in writing that there are issues within their work. A staff member should explain the issue, preferably in a meeting so that the student can seek clarification as required.
The student should be provided with educational support and guidance, and the opportunity to re-submit and to demonstrate their understanding in the next assessment within the designated academic integrity unit. If you ask the student to re-submit their assessment, please note this is not an opportunity for them to enhance the content of their work. Students should be advised that they may only fix the academic integrity concern(s) that prevented marking in the first instance, and they should not make any further changes to their work. It is also important to set a clear deadline for the re-submission, to ensure the student understands the timeline for completion.
If re-submission is not appropriate or feasible, or if the student does not take the opportunity to re-submit the work, the incident should be lodged as an academic integrity warning. Any educative actions assigned to the student must be completed by the nominated deadline (generally two weeks after lodging).
For students taking all other units that are not earmarked as the designated academic integrity unit, student work that contains inadequate acknowledgment of sources should immediately be lodged as an academic integrity warning. Guidance and an opportunity to re-submit the work without penalty should still be provided to the students, where appropriate and feasible.
The unit coordinator is responsible for ensuring that academic integrity warnings are lodged via the Dixon web form. The system provides options for assigning educative actions to ensure students are given an opportunity to improve their skills. The student will receive a letter outlining what actions they are required to undertake.
Verbal warnings should not be given in place of lodging an academic integrity warning via the Dixon web form.
Academic integrity warnings must be lodged via the Dixon web form. This is to ensure that everyone has a record that the student has been formally spoken with about academic integrity concepts. If staff fail to lodge and the student has a similar issue in subsequent study periods, there will be no record that previous intervention has occurred. The unit coordinator is responsible for ensuring that all academic integrity warnings are lodged via the Dixon web form.
Not initially. If there is an opportunity for the student to demonstrate that they have understood the concepts via re-submitting the assessment after they have been educated and addressed the issue, they should be given that opportunity. If they don’t take the opportunity, then yes, they can be penalised. However, if your marking rubric/guide includes criteria around academic integrity and source attribution, this would not be considered deducting marks.
Students must be informed that this is not an opportunity to enhance their work. They should only rectify the sections where there is inadequate acknowledgment of sources or poor paraphrasing.
Yes. A penalty should not be given.
In this case, the academic must determine how the work will be marked. Depending on the nature of the breach and the objectives of the assessment task it may be necessary to create a redacted copy of the work (e.g. ignoring or treating the passages that contain plagiarised elements as quotes) and thus applying the marking rubric/guide only to the portion of the work that clearly represents the student’s own work. Alternatively, the original work may be marked according to the marking rubric/guide, applying deductions for academic writing, use of sources, referencing, or other related criteria. You may apply a mark of zero if the plagiarism is too extensive to evaluate the student’s achievement of the learning outcomes for the assessment task.
It would be appropriate to recommend educative actions, such as the writing with integrity module. During marking, the sections that were copied but referenced should be viewed as quotes. Feedback can be given to the student that they need to be more careful in future assessments, and that quotation marks should be used for any content taken word-for-word from a source to indicate the use of someone else’s voice.
A staff member can recommend the following educative actions for students which should be relevant to the breach.
The student charter and Curtin’s five core values of integrity, respect, courage, excellence and impact guide expected standards of student behaviour. If students breach these standards for the first time, in a situation that is unrelated to academic work, this could be considered a student charter breach.
Some examples of student charter breaches could be:
Breaches of a general nature that are more serious and not related to academic work should be reported as general misconduct.
Step 1 – Verbal warning:
Situations where a student is not adhering to the expected standards of behaviour can be handled in the first instance at the local level by the concerned staff member. Staff members can address the student directly and explain that the student’s behaviour is inappropriate and it should not be repeated.
Step 2 – Follow up in writing:
After speaking with the student, the staff member must lodge a student charter breach via the Dixon web form, providing a summary of the incident and details of any verbal warning. The Office of the Academic Registrar will assess the incident and determine whether the matter is to be handled as a student charter breach or escalated to general misconduct. If the matter is to be handled as a student charter breach, the student will be provided with a written warning reiterating their responsibilities under the student charter to behave appropriately.
Step 3 – Repetition of behaviour:
If a student repeats behaviour for which they have previously received a warning, the matter must be lodged as general misconduct via theDixon web form. General misconduct is handled in accordance with Statute No.10 – Student Discipline and the General Misconduct Rules.
Step 4 – Seek assistance:
If the student’s behaviour is sufficiently serious to consider taking formal disciplinary action, you may contact the Office of the Academic Registrar, sco@curtin.edu.au to discuss what further action may be taken. Threats to the health (physical, emotional or psychological) of staff or students would be automatically fall within this category. If there is an immediate threat call Safer Community Team on 9266 4444 and then once everyone is contact the Office of the Academic Registrar, sco@curtin.edu.au for further advice.
