News

T he University of Otago’s Annual Discipline Report has shown a total of 42 recorded cases of alleged dishonest practice, otherwise known as cheating, in 2014.

The Humanities exceeded all other divisions in alleged dishonest practice in 2014, with 16 cases reported. Of these, 11 were for internal assessments. All internal cases of dishonest practice were due to plagiarism and failing to attribute sources. One case, in the Department of English and Linguistics, was elevated due to a previous offence. This student received a 10 per cent reduction in marks for the submission.

A Theology and Religion student was found with notes in an examination, though there was no direct link between the notes and the examination content. The student was issued with a warning. A Law student was suspected of removing notes from the texts in an open-book examination, though no evidence was found to support this.

A Languages and Cultures student was caught writing rough work on tissues instead of the assigned examination paper; the student received a warning. A Politics student was found in possession of a cellphone during an examination, though the report concluded that the phone was not used.

Throughout the Division of Sciences, 11 cases of alleged dishonest practice were reported in 2014. Ten of the cases were internal, three of these being plagiarism offences. Surveying accounted for half of these, with five reported cases. One plagiarism case was a second-time offender, and the student was failed for the work. Five cases of students submitting the same, or extremely similar, work were recorded. Four of these were Surveying students.

A student in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics was issued a strong warning after attempting to pay another student to complete their online test. A Marine Science student also received zero marks after submitting an assignment that contained the demonstrator’s answer sheet. The one case of dishonest practice in an external examination saw a student also receiving zero marks after writing notes on their hand before entering the exam.

The Division of Health Sciences saw ten recorded cases of alleged dishonest practice in 2014. Eight of these cases were for internal assessments. In one case, a Medicine student submitted a fellow student’s work as their own. The individual was required to resubmit, as well as write an essay on why plagiarism and dishonest practice is incompatible with professional practice.

For two other Dentistry students who submitted large portions of text matching fellow students’ assignments, the essay was compulsory. A fourth Dentistry student submitted an assignment with a small amount of work matching that of another student; this individual received zero marks for plagiarised entries, and the rest of the assignment was marked in the usual manner.

One Medicine and one Public Health student also submitted work with plagiarised aspects. A Physiotherapy student was found bringing notes into an examination and received zero marks. A Health Science student was also found writing notes on tissues in the examination and warned that notes had to be written on official examination paper.

The Division of Commerce had the fewest reported cases, and all five were in external examinations. Two students, one studying Information Science and the other studying Management, were discovered with cellphones during the examinations. One student was issued with a warning as the phone was unlikely to be used during the exam; the other student received zero marks. Another Information Science student was found in possession of a revision booklet and received a fail. An Accountancy and Finance student continued to write after examination time was up, and the individual received a reduced mark. Another student in the same department was found in possession of hidden revision notes, but evidence of use was inconclusive.