Policy on Good and Unfair Academic Practice for the Exams

Good Academic Practice:

The Exams are assessed on the basis that they are the applicant’s own, original work and have been completed and submitted under normal exam conditions.

Unacceptable Academic Practice:

Unacceptable Academic Practice is to commit an act whereby a person may obtain for themselves, or for another, an unpermitted advantage.  Examples of this include:

  1. Plagiarism – defined as using another person’s work and presenting it as one’s own, whether intentionally or unintentionally. The Turnitin system used to upload completed Exam papers has an in-built plagiarism checker and will flag up instances of suspected breaches when work submitted bears a close similarity to that available via an internet search, or existing student paper (including those protected by intellectual property rights).
  2. Collusion – when work done by one person is passed off as the work done by another person.
  3. Fabrication of evidence or data – including presenting false statements of special circumstances which may result in an unfair advantage.
  4. Unacceptable practice in exams – including, but not exclusively:
  5. The use of material or devices which have not been approved for use in the exam
  6. Copying from or communicating with (including electronically) any other person in the exam room (except as authorised by an invigilator)
  7. Impersonating an examination candidate, or allowing oneself to be impersonated
  8. Presenting an exam paper as one’s own work when it includes material produced by unauthorised means
  9. Failing to comply with written/verbal instructions from examination invigilators
  10. Discussing any aspect of the exam paper content with any person who may be sitting the exam at a different time

Consequences:

Where a University Examiner suspects an instance of unacceptable academic practice, they will report the matter to the Scholarship Manager, who will contact the applicant and invite an explanation.

The explanation will be considered by a panel of 3 Examiners from different academic departments. The panel will either accept or reject the explanation.

If the explanation is rejected, or no explanation is received, the exam paper will be marked 0 and the applicant will be excluded from the Aberystwyth University Scholarships and Merit Awards Exams competition.

The applicant has a right to appeal a decision in writing within 10 working days of receiving the decision.  Such an appeal should be addressed for the attention of the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Learning, Teaching and Student Experience, and submitted to scholarships@aber.ac.uk Appeals may include testimony from the school/college Exams Officer if appropriate.