Plagiarism Policy

Obelisk Training is committed to ensuring a great learning experience for its students. It aims to provide a learning environment that fosters the qualities of independent learning and academic integrity.

This policy seeks to encourage ethical conduct and to inform staff and students about the Obelisk Training standards of academic behaviour. Students have a responsibility to maintain the highest standards of academic integrity in their work. Students must not cheat in assessment and must ensure that they do not plagiarise.

Plagiarism is the act of misrepresenting as one's own original work the ideas, interpretations, words or creative works of another. These include published and unpublished documents, designs, music, sounds, images, photographs, computer codes and ideas gained through working in a group. These ideas, interpretations, words or works may be found in print and/or electronic media 

One of the core functions of Obelisk Training is to develop student’s ability to apply critical reasoning to assessment activities through independent thought and to make decisions that reflect the student’s considerations of the task or workplace requirement. 

 Obelisk Training acknowledges that to develop this ability, the student will study the work of others via issued textbooks, learning material or through their own research. However, it is important that students in their learning acknowledge, through appropriate referencing, earlier work from which they have drawn information.
 

Referencing demonstrates that the student has read the issued material or has undertaken their own research in other sources. Failure to reference appropriately is considered unethical academic behaviour and will result in a student’s work not being accepted.

Students should understand that assignment and project work submitted for assessment must consist of original effort. It is insufficient to simply copy work from other sources and submit it, even if those sources are appropriately acknowledged. Work submitted by a student must have an original component.

The following are examples of plagiarism where a student intentionally does not acknowledgement or reference an author or source

• Direct copying of paragraphs, sentences, a single sentence or significant parts of a sentence; 
• Direct copying of paragraphs, sentences, a single sentence or significant parts of a sentence with an end reference but without quotation marks around the copied text; 
• Copying ideas, concepts, research results, computer codes, statistical tables, designs, images, sounds or text or any combination of these; 
• Paraphrasing, summarising or simply rearranging another person's words, ideas, etc., without reference or explanation;  
• Offering an idea or interpretation that is not one's own without identifying whose idea or interpretation it is;
• A ‘cut and paste' of statements from multiple sources; 
• Presenting as independent, work done in collaboration with others; 
• Copying or adapting another student's original work into a submitted assessment item;
• Copying or adapting a student’s own work submitted in a previous essay or assessment;

Alternatively, there will be instances when a student unintentionally fails to cite sources or to do so adequately.

Careless or inadequate referencing or failure to reference will be considered poor practice. Where careless referencing is identified, the student will be required to correct the error and resubmit an assignment.

At Obelisk Training, students are to be encouraged to apply the Harvard Referencing System in-text citation. This approach requires three pieces of information about a source within the text of the students work. This information is:

At the end of the students work, a List of References must be included. This should include all the books, journal articles and other sources of information you have used to research your assignment. The reference list should be laid out alphabetically and the title of the source should be italicised. Each reference must include:

In every field, there is a body of knowledge and material that has become part of the public domain and which can be drawn on without specific acknowledgment. Common knowledge includes facts that are generally known, such as common facts of history, common sense information, accepted folklore and aphorisms that have been adopted as part of common English language.

 As examples, it would not be necessary to reference the following:

That John Howard was the Prime Minister of Australia (common fact of history) 

That humans need food and water for survival (common sense observation) 

That the “Bunyip” is a man-eating Australian animals that live in water-holes, swamps and creeks (accepted folklore) 

Cheating is defined as “a form of deceit with a view to gaining an advantage for the cheat.” At Obelisk Training, cheating is usually related to taking unauthorised material into assessments. Obelisk Training trainers have a responsibility to explain clearly the expectations related to any assessment, what constitutes cheating, and to promote a climate of honesty in students.

Obelisk Training staff are responsible for:

Students are responsible for:

In the case of suspected plagiarism, the staff member will report the incident to the Chief Executive Officer. The Chief Executive Officer, in consultation with the staff member will determine if the plagiarism has resulted from poor academic practice or was intentional. This preliminary step may involve an informal interview with the student. 

The Chief Executive Officer and staff member will:

If the above factors have been considered and it has been determined that the plagiarism has arisen from poor academic practice, the student is to be requested to revise the work and resubmit it for the assessment.  

If, after consideration of the above factors it is determined that the plagiarism was intentional, the student’s work is not to be accepted and the student is to be issued with an alternative assessment assignment to complete. The student is to be given a formal warning (in writing) by the Chief Executive Officer explaining the seriousness of the incident and the consequences if the student is found to plagiarise again. 

Students who commit plagiarism after being formally warned are to be withdrawn from the programme they are enrolled and issued with a refund of their tuition fees less all expenses incurred by Obelisk Training up to the point of their withdrawal.