Gestalt Therapy Brisbane is committed to upholding standards of academic integrity and honesty. Cheating, collusion and plagiarism in any form is unacceptable and will be treated seriously by the Institute.

Definitions

Cheating: Seeking to obtain an unfair advantage in written or practical work required to be submitted or completed for assessment.

Collusion: Unauthorised collaboration on assessable work with another person or persons.

Plagiarism: To take and use another person’s ideas and or manner of expressing them and to pass them off as one’s own by failing to give appropriate acknowledgement. This includes material from any source, staff, students or the Internet. It can be published and unpublished works.

Plagiarism occurs when students fail to acknowledge that the ideas of others are being used. Specifically it occurs when:

·           Other people’s work and/or ideas are paraphrased and presented without a reference;

·           Other students’ work is copied or partly copied;

·           Phrases and passages are used verbatim without quotation marks and/or without a reference to the author or a web page;  

·           A student relies fully on the work of another student in the formulation of group work or written work; and,

·           Lecture notes are reproduced without due acknowledgement.

It is the Student’s responsibility to:

·           Submit only work that is their own or that properly acknowledges the ideas, interpretations, words or creative works of others;

·           Avoid lending original work to others for the purpose of the other taking ideas and content from the work;

·           Be clear about assessment conditions for assessment items;

·           Be clear about what is appropriate referencing and the consequences of inappropriate referencing; and,

·           Discourage others from plagiarising by observing the practices above.

Trainers at the Institute have a duty to educate students about the APA referencing conventions used at GTB for their written and oral work and provide clear examples of what is acceptable.  Trainers need to also ensure they understand what plagiarism is and ensure that students are aware of GTB’s Plagiarism Policy.  It is the responsibility of trainers of Gestalt Therapy Brisbane to:

·           Inform all students of appropriate referencing techniques and provide clear examples of what is acceptable;

·           Clearly explain academic expectations and what constitutes plagiarism to students in course profile literature;

·           Set appropriate conditions for group work and make clear the distinction between group work and individual work; and,

·           Cultivate, with their students, a climate of mutual respect for original work.

A trainer who suspects that plagiarism has occurred must produce evidence (through identifying the source) to support his/her allegation and present this to the Directors.

A student who it is thought has plagiarised will be provided with the opportunity to respond and will be asked to meet with one or both of the Directors to talk about his or her work.  The Directors are required to put the matter to the student, identify the passages which are alleged to be plagiarised and their source. The Directors of GTB must decide whether or not they believe that plagiarism was likely to have been intentional or unintentional. The Directors of GTB will record any statements made or not made by the student that indicate that the plagiarism was intentional rather than unintentional.

If the student is unable to provide a satisfactory explanation of the correspondence between the student’s work and the sources identified by the Directors, it will be assumed that plagiarism was done with intention to cheat.

Findings regarding intent

 If the failure to acknowledge the ideas of others was not intentional, the only offence the student has committed is the academic misdemeanour of failing to reference a source correctly. There will be instances when a student unintentionally fails to cite sources or to do so adequately.  For example, a student;

·            May clearly recognise the need for referencing but reference carelessly or inadequately;

·            Has undertaken extensive research but, in the process, loses track of the source of some material; or,

·            Is ignorant of the APA referencing academic conventions.

A student who is guilty of academic misdemeanor may be required to correct the error/s made.
 
If the Directors are reasonably satisfied that the plagiarism was, more likely than not, done with the intention to obtain an unfair advantage in assessment, the matter will be named as plagiarism.

If the Directors name that a piece of work was completed through plagiarism the student will be given a warning and asked to resubmit the relevant piece of work. No more than a Pass grading will be awarded to a student who has resubmitted work after a plagiarism offence has been found against that student. Students who continue to be found to have plagiarized their work will be asked to withdraw from the course.

A student’s file will record any warnings with regard to plagiarism or cheating and the outcomes (if any) of an accusation of plagiarism. The student will have access to this information and any subsequent allegations of plagiarism that are made against the student.

If a student doesn’t agree with the outcome of the finding made against him or him and expresses this disagreement they will be invited to take recourse through following Gestalt Therapy Brisbane’s Policy No 3: Grievance Policy and Procedures.

Ratified by Directors of GTB

November 2009