Top tips on how to avoid an SAO

Top tips on how to avoid a Suspected Academic Offence from your Union Advice Service

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An academic offence occurs when a student tries to gain an unfair advantage over other students by breaking or not following the academic regulations. Remember, an academic offence doesn’t have to be purposeful to occur.

Collusion

This is when you work with other people on your assignment that isn’t intentionally group based. This could also occur if you knowingly let someone copy your work

Impersonation

This means sitting someone else’s exam for them

Contract cheating

You would be suspected of this if you buy or obtain work from a third party, such as an online source

Improper exam conduct

You would be suspected of this if you are found to have unauthorised paper, material or devices in an exam

Fabrication

You could be suspected of this if you misuse data in your work

Self-Plagiarism

You could be suspected of this if you copy and paste parts of your work from previous assignments into your current assignment

Plagiarism

You could be suspected of plagiarism if you submit work that isn’t your own or don’t reference thoroughly and correctly

..and more

Any other misconduct which will give you an unfair advantage over other students is considered an academic offence

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Top Tips:

Here are our five tops tips to avoid being suspected of an academic offence.

Top Top #1

Make yourself aware of the academic offence procedure! The process will hopefully encourage you to be careful and make good decisions when writing your assignments and sitting your exams.
Top Top #2

Never share your work! It can be tempting to help a friend in need but unfortunately you too will be penalised, even if you don’t think they will copy.
Top Top #3

Make use of the referencing guidelines online! The library has lots of resources to help you improve your academic writing, paraphrasing and referencing skills, so definitely check out what’s available to make sure you are working at the best of your ability.
Top Top #4

Allow yourself plenty of time to reference! There’s nothing worse than rushing your work at the last minute and remembering that you still have to add your references. If you allow yourself enough time, you can reference as you go and avoid any easily made mistakes.
Top Top #5

Check your similarity score before submitting! The Turnitin programme is used globally and so will pick up any similarities in work worldwide. This makes it the perfect tool to check your similarity score. You can submit multiple times before the deadline to ensure that the score is kept low and that you have paraphrased correctly.

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Published: 09 Mar 2022 11:42 , Last updated: 01 Apr 2022 11:58