Law: Undergraduate Support Services

The University of the Western Cape is built on shared values and norms of behaviour, including honesty, fairness, and responsibility. 

• Academic integrity is described as the achievement through honest and responsible university education.  
• Academic integrity is defined by honestly performing tests as well as other academic assignments, providing correct and reliable facts including research in academic assignments, and preventing plagiarism by correctly integrating and acknowledging sources.
• A university's student credibility and evaluation of student performance rely on honesty.

• Having academic integrity means that others can trust you. They can rely on you to act honestly and to do what you say you will do. 
• Trust is one of the key characteristics of a successful leader. As a student, you can develop good reputations by being honest, fair, and trustworthy.
• Having academic integrity is important because it provides value to your degree. 
• Academic integrity is important because it can offer you peace of mind knowing that you believe in doing the right thing, and always try to act consistently with those beliefs. 

• ‘Academic misconduct’ is gaining or attempting to gain, or helping others to gain or attempt to gain, an unfair academic advantage in formal University assessment, or any activity likely to undermine the integrity essential to scholarship and research.
• It includes being in possession of unauthorised materials or electronic devices during an examination, including recording or communication devices or devices that can store data, even where Registered Students are unaware that such materials or devices are unauthorised, have no intention of using them, or are unaware that they have them in their possession. 
• Details regarding academic misconduct are provided in the UWC Student Disciplinary Rules Rule 3.5.1.1.2 which states that:
  • 'the appropriation of any other person’s work and the unacknowledged incorporation of that work in one’s own work offered for credit. This would include, but is not limited to:
  • appropriation of work from a textbook, journal, report or similar document was written by someone else without acknowledging the author(s) or source
  • appropriation of work from someone else’s assignment, thesis, test, or research paper without acknowledging this other person.’

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is taking another person's work and presenting it as your own.

There are different forms of plagiarism and a few examples are:

• Plagiarism of ideas - claiming credit for someone else's thoughts, ideas, designs, works of art, or inventions.
• Word-for-word plagiarism - copying the exact expression of someone's writing or a very close approximation to it.
• Plagiarism of sources - using another person's citations without acknowledging the source of the citations.
• Plagiarism of authorship - claiming to be the author of an entire piece of work...fully or substantially authored by another. Translating an article from another language and publishing it under one's name, as if one had written it, is plagiarism of authorship but not word-for-word plagiarism.

Watch the video on "What is Plagiarism".

Collusion

Collusion is when one person intentionally collaborates with another person in a dishonest way.

This is a more serious form of inappropriate collaboration with another student. While inappropriate collaboration may be accidental, collusion is a deliberate attempt to deceive.

Some examples of collusion are:

• writing or 'fixing up' an assignment for another person;
• 'borrowing' or taking material from another person's assignment with their permission;
• working on an assignment with another student and presenting it as your own work;
• buying or selling assignments or parts of assignments online or in any other format.

Cheating

Cheating of any form in examinations is regarded as serious academic misconduct.

Some examples of cheating are:

• sneaking notes or formulas or any information that might assist you in answering examination questions, into an exam, for example, on your mobile phone or written on your arm;
• helping or getting help from another person during the exam;
• copying from another student's exam paper;
• getting someone else to sit the examination on your behalf using your student ID;
• using a non-approved calculator or any other non-approved device.

Misrepresentation or falsification

Misrepresentation or falsification of university documents is a serious form of academic misconduct and can lead to suspension or expulsion.

Examples of falsification include:

• Presenting false transcripts or references in an application for a program. 
• Submitting work which is not your own or was written by someone else
• Lying about a personal issue or illness in order to extend a deadline

What happens when you copy and paste from the original source?

Read the extract from a student’s essay, and compare it to the original source.

Student's Work

With advances in digital technology, shifting public expectations, and the increasing reach of the internet, the law of copyright is now more important than ever to protect the rights of copyright holders.

The copyright holder is typically the work's creator, or a publisher or other business to whom copyright has been assigned. Copyright holders routinely invoke legal and technological measures to prevent and penalize copyright infringement. Copyright infringement refers to the use of works protected by copyright law without permission, infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the protected work, or to make derivative works.

While serious copyright infringement can be prosecuted via the criminal justice system, disputes are usually resolved through direct negotiation, a notice, and take-down process, or litigation in civil court.

Original Source

Copyright infringement is the use of works protected by copyright law without permission, infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the protected work, or to make derivative works. The copyright holder is typically the work's creator, or a publisher or other business to whom copyright has been assigned. Copyright holders routinely invoke legal and technological measures to prevent and penalize copyright infringement.

Copyright infringement disputes are usually resolved through direct negotiation, a notice and takedown process, or litigation in civil court. Egregious or large-scale commercial infringement, especially when it involves counterfeiting, is sometimes prosecuted via the criminal justice system. Shifting public expectations, advances in digital technology and the increasing reach of the Internet have led to such widespread, anonymous infringement that copyright-dependent industries now focus less on pursuing individuals who seek and share copyright-protected content online, and more on expanding copyright law to recognize and penalize – as "indirect" infringers – the service providers and software distributors which are said to facilitate and encourage individual acts of infringement by others.

Wikipedia, Copyright Infringement (19 June 2020)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement

What are the problems with the student's essay? 

There are no citations to the source - Any information used from a source must be cited appropriately. Quotation marks need to be used for direct quotes.

There is no evidence of the student's understanding - This is very important in your studies. By purely copy-pasting, the student has not demonstrated their ability to synthesise and express these ideas in their own words.

There is poor evaluation of source credibility - Wikipedia entries are rarely produced or reviewed by experts in the field, and should never be used for academic work. It is important to evaluate all sources in your research for credibility.

Quoting text

Remember that excessive quoting is not advised as it does not allow you to input your own ‘voice’ to the argument.

Why? Because:

• It reveals a lack of ethical awareness about the need, to be honest, and responsible for your own unique creations.
• It reveals a lack of practical skills such as time management to research effectively, finding and using information, paraphrasing information, and citing and referencing.
• It reveals a lack of critical thinking, good judgment about reliable sources, and synthesis of ideas.

• To show you have read about a subject.
• To show the range of material you have used as evidence.
• To lend credibility to your arguments and discussions.
• To inform readers of the scope and depth of your reading.
• To integrate information by assessing, comparing, contrasting, or evaluating it, to show understanding.
• To emphasise a position that you agree or disagree with.
• To refer to other research that leads up to your study.
• To highlight a pertinent point by quoting the original.
• To enable readers to consult the original source independently. For instance, the interpretation you give may be different from the one intended.
• You must acknowledge the source of any information to avoid plagiarism.

• When you are using or referring to somebody else's words or ideas from a magazine, book, journal, newspaper, song, TV program, movie, Web page, computer program, letter, advertisement, or any other medium.
• When you use information gained through interviewing another person.
• When you copy the exact words or a "unique phrase" from somewhere.
• When you reprint any diagrams, illustrations, charts, and pictures.
• When you use ideas that others have given you in conversations or over email.

In-text or Footnotes

All material sourced from another author, whether it is directly quoted or paraphrased, must be referenced in the text or footnotes. Law students' references must be in a footnote and must be accurate.  It must be possible for the reader to check that you have stated the law accurately. In other words, you need to give sufficient information in your footnote to enable another person to find the exact place from whence you have drawn your information. When you use case law as your authority, the connection between the case(s) you cite and what you are stating in your writing must be clear to the reader.

Bibliography

A bibliography is a detailed list of sources referred to in your essay or consulted during the course of its preparation. It contains more detail than footnote references; in particular, it indicates the publisher and place of publication of books. As with footnotes, each bibliography reference should end in a full stop.

There are several different referencing styles used within UWC but the Law Faculty requires law students to use the Law Faculty Styling Guide.