What happens if you're caught cheating?

We expect all our students to be serious about not cheating on examinations. As long as you write your exam, essay and other assignments yourself, without any other means than those allowed, there is nothing you should worry about. However, sometimes students attempt shortcuts. It is therefore important to know what is considered cheating and what the consequences of cheating are.

You should always indicate your sources or references: If you use other author’s material from books, scientific articles or essays, you must always indicate the source. This applies to printed format or electronic sources such as the Internet or databases.

There are several systems that can help indicate references. “The Harvard” system is the most commonly used and is recommended by most teachers.

This is considered cheating:

  • To submit and exam or essay written by someone else
  • Bringing notes to a query/exam, looking at someone else’s answers or using other means than those allowed
  • To copy all or parts of texts written by others and present it as their own, even if you provide references
  • Not to participate in the group work, but have your name as the author when submitting work

This is not cheating:

  • To quote texts written by others if you highlight the reference in your presentation/work, provided that the use of the quote is justified by some extent. The quote should be marked with quotation marks.
  • To refer to other author’s texts and then explain in other words

Reference to anti-plagiarism guide – there is a web-based tool named Refero that shows you how to use other people’s texts, avoiding plagiarism. The guide contains 16 pages and it takes about 30 minutes to read.

Urkund

Some examiners use this tool to review essays and assignments. Urkund is a fully automatic system against plagiarism and it is successfully used in many universities across Europe. Urkund’s system reviews all documents in comparison with three main central source areas such as the Internet, published materials and previous work submitted by students.

A teacher who suspects cheating is obliged to report it to the head of department, who in return decides whether the case should be reported to the Disciplinary Board. Therefore, a teacher must not be the one deciding if it was a case of cheating, nor take any action besides the one mentioned above.

Last modified: Friday, 30 June 2017, 4:18 PM