EXCLUSIVE: Plagiarism

Plagiarism

· Ensure that you fully understand your responsibilities and our policy on plagiarism· Familiarise yourself with the guidance contained in this document relating to the referencing techniques and other conventions that you will be required to adhere to· Ensure that you follow them consistently· Ask for help or guidance if you are not sureThe consequences of plagiarism are serious indeed, including:· Your work being destroyed and not being able to submit any further assignments – so missing out on your qualification and having any previous invalid certificates destroyed· Being asked to leave the course· Not being able to register or do anything with the ILM again in the future· In severe cases it could seriously endanger your future career and may even result in legal action.· At the very least, it is time-consuming, embarrassing and unnecessaryFor Merlin, it is a serious matter too. If you are found to have committed an act of plagiarism, your actions or carelessness could result in my professional and commercial activities with awarding bodies, Ofsted and the ESFA being suspended, being unable to issue certificates to other people in your group

As part of your programme, you will be required to submit a range of evidence for assessment. These will be fully explained at your programme induction, and the details of the specific unit requirements will be provided in each relevant module. Merlin Consultancy and the Main Provider operate a zero-tolerance policy regarding plagiarism, any form of cheating, or malpractice, and it is vital that you read and understand this guide and our policy so that you are able to meet your responsibilities as a candidate.

It is your responsibility to:

· Ensure that you fully understand your responsibilities and our policy on plagiarism· Familiarise yourself with the guidance contained in this document relating to the referencing techniques and other conventions that you will be required to adhere to· Ensure that you follow them consistently· Ask for help or guidance if you are not sure

The consequences of plagiarism are serious indeed, including:

· Your work being destroyed and not being able to submit any further assignments – so missing out on your qualification and having any previous invalid certificates destroyed· Being asked to leave the course· Not being able to register or do anything with the ILM again in the future· In severe cases it could seriously endanger your future career and may even result in legal action.· At the very least, it is time-consuming, embarrassing and unnecessaryFor Merlin, it is a serious matter too. If you are found to have committed an act of plagiarism, your actions or carelessness could result in my professional and commercial activities with awarding bodies, Ofsted and the ESFA being suspended, being unable to issue certificates to other people in your group

1

What is plagiarism

2

How to avoid it

3

Referencing

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is a form of cheating that applies to you and all your evidence during this programme. You may be reading this and switching it off at this point because you would “never cheat.” If that is your reaction, then there is even more reason to continue and ensure you fully understand the concepts! Because it is expected, it is quickly done by being careless as much as by intent or not knowing the necessary ways to avoid it. When you submit your evidence, if it contains any work that is not yours and you fail to indicate this or acknowledge your sources, you are committing plagiarism.

“to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own”“to use someone else’s production without crediting the source”“to commit literary theft”“to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source”

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, to plagiarise is defined as:

1.

1.

In other words, plagiarism is an act of fraud because it involves taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as your own.Plagiarism can occur in various forms, and any form detected in your evidence will be treated as cheating, so read on to learn all about it…

You may not mean to, but unless you read this through and understand fully, you may fall foul of the rules without knowing. That is no excuse, and students can, and frequently do, fall into the trap by doing any one of the following plagiarism includes:

2.

1.

5.

3.

4.

What does plagiarism look like?

Plagiarism

1

How to avoid it

Copying sentences, paragraphs, models, pictures or ideas from somewhere or someone else by passing them off as your own without acknowledging or citing them. You will often find relevant definitions or explanations in books, articles or on websites that exactly answer what you are trying to say. (Indeed we hope you will in order to expand your learning.) Or you may find a set of statistics or assembled facts, a photograph, picture, graphic or model to illustrate your point perfectly. You need to know that copying these or cutting and pasting them without giving credit to the author or source is a form of plagiarism.One more thing to be aware of is that you can actually plagiarise your own work. WHAT???! Yes – really so using something that you have written and submitted for another qualification – even in the past – is plagiarism as you can only be awarded a qualification once for a single piece of work. If you think this might be the case then it is really important that you ask for advice.

Poor referencing Whenever you use an explanation of someone else’s work, even if you are not quoting it word-for-word, you must reference your source. Advice on referencing is in Section 6.5.

Submitting evidence that you didn’t write yourself This is not as uncommon as it might seem and can occur due to various situations. For example, essays can be easily found and purchased on the internet, you may have access to previous examples that we use to give guidance for model answers, someone may offer to write it for you, or you may know someone else who did the course and got a good mark so that they might lend you theirs. Additionally, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to generate work submitted as your original effort falls into this category. Using any of these methods, with or without consent, or copying word-for-word sentences, chunks of text, original ideas, or AI-generated content is classified as plagiarism. Also, whether you give credit or not, copying so many words, ideas, sentences, or AI-generated text that it makes up most of your answer is plagiarism.

Collusion Another thing to watch out for is if you tackle evidence in your learning set, which we encourage you to do. Collusion is another form of plagiarism that “involves unauthorised co-operation between at least two people with the intent to deliberately mislead or deceive” (ILM Plagiarism, Collusion and Cheating Policy; February 2016, p.8). It can take several forms, such as two or more learners producing a piece of work together that one or more of you submit as original work or one person submitting the work of another, even with their consent and presenting it as their own. So, it is essential to make sure that your submission is in your own words and that you each write and submit your assignments independently. It is fine to share ideas and experiences and to discuss books and articles. Indeed, we encourage you to do so. However, it is collusion if you help a fellow learner produce an assignment that they later submit as their own work. For this reason, you should never lend your work to another learner. If you are using a shared drive or computer, protect your work by pass-wording or saving it to your personal drive, USB, or memory stick.

Failing to put a quote in quotation marks or italics This is becoming increasingly common in our experience, and we are finding more and more instances of this happening in areas such as defining a term which must NOT be part of your assignment. If you use a quotation or exact words from someone else or another source, you MUST put them in quotation marks. It is not enough to use a section of text and then give credit afterwards or at the end of the bibliography. You must make it clear with quotation marks that you are using it in its original form within your text.

How to avoid it

It’s quite simple. The main thing required is ensuring that all of your submissions are your own work and free from any risk of plagiarism. You can do this by:

1

1

2

2

3

4

Last but not least, if you are still in doubt, then ask for help! It’s not in my interest to have work from my learners returned as plagiarised, so I am more than happy to help you.However, the responsibility not to plagiarise is with you.

Free online plagiarism checking services:

Grammarly

Dupli Checker

eLearning Industry

If you're still in doubt...

Still not sure?

Referencing

Last but not least, if you are still in doubt, then ask for help! It’s not in my interest to have work from my learners returned as plagiarised, so I am more than happy to help you. However, the responsibility not to plagiarise is with you.

Keeping track of any sources you use as you go so that you can acknowledge them properly

Referencing sources accurately

Checking your work before you submit. Be careful to check over your work before you submit it and check for referencing, quotation marks and acknowledgement of all sources.

If you are in any doubt, or have tackled your evidence over the course of the programme and want to refresh your referencing, then there are some effective and free online plagiarism checking services that you can use.

Free online plagiarism checking services:

Grammarly

Dupli Checker

eLearning Industry

If you're still in doubt...

Still not sure?

Here's how to do it

Referencing

The act of plagiarising may arise because of a careless mistake, a lack of understanding about the aims of the assignment, or a lack of self-confidence in general or in your language ability – especially if you are new to learning and English is not your first language. The thing to remember is that you are doing this programme to learn. If you resort to copying other material sources, you prevent or compromise your learning, so you will also be cheating yourself.By all means, use all the resources you can, including the workbooks you are given, the Internet, textbooks, journals, model answers, and other guides.The key word here is “guides.” So use them to guide you, but not to copy from. The rule is simple: Anything you use that is from another source or someone else’s work MUST be referenced accurately, whether it is a quotation, definition, sentence, picture, photograph taken by someone else, model, diagram, statistical result, or idea.

Referencing and Citations

When you use another person’s work, you must include a reference for all the sources of information that you use when writing or creating your own work. If you refer to their ideas or include a direct quotation, you must acknowledge it, and this is known as a citation. This is whether you get it from a book or other text or the internet.

Text

Internet

Models or Graphics

Congratulations

Bibliography or Reference list

At the end of your evidence, you must list any books, articles or sources you have used. Even if you haven’t quoted from them, you have still used their ideas and referred to them, so they must be acknowledged. For example:

For books

For books Blanchard, K & Bowles, S. (1996) Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service. Jossey-Bass

For journal articles

For journal articles Brownell, J. (1992). Hospitality managers' communication practices. International Journal of Hospitality Management 11:2 111-128.

For internet

For internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism (downloaded June 16th 2016)

Last but not least, if you are still in doubt, then ask for help! It’s not in my interest to have work from my learners returned as plagiarised, so I am more than happy to help you. However, the responsibility not to plagiarise is with you.

Texts Referencing and citations for your sources means giving the author's name, the date of their work that you have referred to, and the page number. For example: “Referencing from books is important, and this is how you should do it…” (Bloggs, 2010, p.64), which is known as the Harvard system, or you can use a style called Vancouver Superscript2 like this: Vancouver Superscript2 is a form of referencing where you add a number for your source, and then you can use the same number throughout if you are using that source again. You then list it at the bottom of the page or the end of your text like this: 1. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/administration-and-support-services/library/public/harvard.pdf 2. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/administration-and-support-services/library/public/vancouver.pdf This is commonly used in medical and scientific texts, but you can use it or the Harvard system.

Internet If the source of the information you are using is the internet or a website, then give the website URL and date of download. E.g.“Plagiarism is considered as academic dishonesty.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism

Models or graphics Be careful what you download. Just because it is on the Internet doesn’t mean it is freely available, and it may be subject to copyright legislation.

· For books: Blanchard, K & Bowles, S. (1996) Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service. Jossey-Bass

Congratulations

on completing this module!

“to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own” “to use someone else’s production without crediting the source”“to commit literary theft”
“to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source”