We encourage teamwork in your studies and exercises. However we expect that you write your assignments on your own including designs and programs. Education studies show clearly, that learning is more fun and more effective in small groups, of perhaps three. Testing the acquired skills is more reliable in individual tests.
In this unit you will be assessed individually and your work will be checked for plagiarism. Assignments must be your sole individual work. Identical or highly similar solutions (for instance designs or programs) may be considered plagiarism. When you use the thoughts or words of others, you always must indicate this by proper citation, i.e., putting the copied text in quotes and giving a full reference of the author, title etc. If a significant portion of your assignment is coming from other sources than your own work, the lecture notes or the prescribed textbook you will lose marks accordingly.
The faculty draft plagiarism policy defines plagiarism as the unacknowledged use of someone else's work. This includes sections of text, quotations, original ideas, graphics, diagrams, charts, tables and figures.
Plagiarism becomes cheating with the intent of gaining an unfair advantage.
Clearly plagiarism and cheating are unethical. If we would tolerate plagiarism, a few of your peers might be hired later without having the appropriate and expected skills. The employers would no longer trust the Monash degree and thus your degree would be degraded. Do not tolerate plagiarism!
The Faculty policy on plagiarism requires an investigation of each such case. Students caught copying someone else work (e.g. fellow students or off the internet) and pretend it is their own will be sent to the Associate Dean (Teaching) to face the disciplinary committee. In the past it has led to any of the following:
Note, that the originators of plagiarised assignments may also lose all their marks for the assignment, for unethical behaviour, namely contributing to an unfair advantage of some friends.
It is your responsibility to make sure that others cannot gain access to your assignments. NOTE that storing files on lab PCs can be unsafe. It is your responsibility to store your files in protected areas and protect them against reading by other students while you are working on them. You must also delete shared files before you log out. Otherwise you may share responsibility for plagiarism if your fellow student picks up your assignment files and submit them.
Therefore, plagiarism is considered a serious offence by the university!
For more information on plagiarism and how it can be detected, go to
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/projects/plague/.
Students should consult University materials on cheating, in particular:
It is the student's responsibility to make themselves familiar with the contents of these documents.