Case summary February 2023 | Justified
A student was found to have committed academic misconduct in their re-sit attempt in a taught postgraduate module. The provider applied a penalty from its standard table of penalties, that the module mark would be set at zero with a reassessment attempt if that were allowed by the regulations for the course.
Case summary February 2023 | Partly Justified
A postgraduate student was suspected of plagiarism and poor academic practice in two essays submitted in the previous academic year.
Case summary February 2023 | Justified
Student A and student B were found by their provider to have submitted identical essays for assessment in different modules. Student A immediately admitted that they had bought the essay and submitted it without alteration. Student B said that they were the author of the essay and they had uploaded it to an external company for help with proof reading. Student B suggested that this service had stolen and sold the work.
Case summary February 2023 | Partly Justified
A student was on a taught postgraduate programme and had to take an 24-hour open-book exam for one module. Following the exam, the provider told the student that it was investigating them for contract cheating.
Case summary February 2023 | Not Justified
A student was studying a taught postgraduate programme and had to take an open book exam for one module. After the exam, the provider told the student that it was investigating them for contract cheating. The student was suspected of uploading some questions from the exam to a website, asking for answers from other users. The student admitted that they had posted a question but said they didn’t look at the answers. They said they had some difficult personal circumstances at the time that had affected their judgment.
Case summary February 2023 | Not Justified
A student was suspected of contract cheating in their coursework submission by presenting material that they had bought online as their own work.
Case summary February 2023 | Not Justified
An international student was invited to a disciplinary panel after a large proportion of their essay was found to be identical in content and structure to a previous student’s submission in the same module.
Case summary February 2023 | Not Justified
A final-year undergraduate student was suspected of plagiarism in an essay and asked to attend a disciplinary panel hearing.
Case summary February 2023 | Partly Justified
A PhD student carried out a research study with patients in a healthcare setting outside the UK. The student obtained relevant ethical approval from the provider. But when their work was submitted for examination, a concern was raised about whether appropriate local approval had been obtained. The provider began a research misconduct investigation. It concluded that relevant ethical approval procedures had not been carried out, and accordingly made a finding of research misconduct.
Case summary February 2023 | Justified
A student was suspected of academic misconduct in an online examination. The log-in records showed that the student completed the assessment in less than 4 minutes. Some other students who completed the assessment also took a very short time. These students admitted that they had received information about the questions in the assessment from their peers who had chosen to access it at an earlier time within the permitted window. The information had been shared in a WhatsApp group.
We publish summaries of some of the complaints that we review. We always leave out of the summary any information that might identify the student who made the complaint. In some cases we decide that it is in the public interest to publish a summary of a complaint that includes the name of the provider.
