Academic Integrity
Academic and Assessment Integrity
Iona Columba College is committed to maintaining the integrity of its training and assessment. Students are expected to act honestly, submit their own work, acknowledge the work and ideas of others and complete assessment tasks in accordance with College instructions.
Academic and assessment integrity helps protect the value of nationally recognised qualifications and ensures that assessment decisions are based on each student’s own knowledge, skills and performance.
Student Responsibilities
Students must ensure that all assessment work they submit is their own work, except where the assessment task specifically permits collaboration, group work, external assistance or the use of particular resources.
Students must acknowledge any sources they use in their assessment work. This may include books, articles, websites, class materials, other people’s ideas and artificial intelligence tools where their use is permitted.
Students may be required to use an approved referencing style, such as Chicago or APA, depending on the course, unit or assessment task. Students should follow the instructions provided by their trainer or assessor.
Plagiarism, Cheating and Assessment Misconduct
Plagiarism, cheating and other forms of assessment misconduct are not permitted.
Assessment misconduct may include:
- copying another person’s work without acknowledgement
- paraphrasing or summarising another person’s work without acknowledgement
- submitting work completed by another person
- using unauthorised notes, materials, devices or assistance during an assessment
- sharing answers or assessment materials where this is not permitted
- submitting the same or substantially similar work for more than one assessment task without permission
- using artificial intelligence tools in an assessment task without permission, and
- falsely representing individual contributions in a group or collaborative task.
The College may take reasonable steps to verify the originality, authenticity and authorship of student assessment work. This may include electronic originality checking, review of drafts, verbal questioning, interview, supervised assessment, practical demonstration or requiring a student to explain their submitted work in their own words.
Where the integrity or authenticity of student work is in question, the College will follow a fair and consistent process. Where misconduct is established, the College may apply educative action, reassessment requirements and/or penalties in accordance with the relevant College policy and procedure.
Use of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence tools, including generative artificial intelligence tools, must not be used to complete assessment work unless their use is specifically permitted in the assessment instructions for the relevant task.
Where artificial intelligence tools are permitted, students must follow the conditions stated in the assessment instructions. Depending on the task, students may be required to:
- acknowledge or reference the use of artificial intelligence tools
- provide the prompts or instructions entered into the artificial intelligence tool
- keep drafts or records showing how the assessment work was developed
- explain how artificial intelligence tools were used, and/or
- demonstrate that they understand and can apply the required knowledge and skills.
The unauthorised use of artificial intelligence tools may constitute assessment misconduct and may result in educative action, reassessment requirements and/or penalties.
Verification of Assessment Work
Students may be required to complete additional verification activities as part of the assessment process. These may include verbal questioning, interview, practical demonstration, supervised assessment or other reasonable activities to confirm that the submitted evidence is the student’s own work and that the student can demonstrate the required competency.
Further information about academic and assessment integrity, plagiarism, assessment misconduct and the use of artificial intelligence is provided in College policies, student handbooks, assessment instructions and learning resources.