Where it appears that a student has failed to meet, or to promote, Deakin’s academic integrity standards, the alleged breach will be investigated under the Student Academic Integrity procedure, or under the Student Research Integrity procedure.

Breaching academic integrity can result in significant consequences, ranging from a formal warning to permanent expulsion from the University or the rescinding of a degree. You could:

• Fail your subject or course – you can expect to face formal penalties from the University that may affect your grades and enrolment and, in some cases, hinder your future career.
• Lose your visa – as an international student, any instances of academic misconduct could lead to the cancellation of your Confirmation of Enrolment.
• Be ineligible for, or be stripped of, professional accreditation – if contract cheating is on your record, many professions won’t ever let you register to practise.
• Be blackmailed by cheating service operators – the people who supply your assignment can force you to pay even more money by threatening to report you to the University.

If you’re investigated for an alleged breach of academic integrity, you will be able to respond before a decision is made. Strict timeframes apply, so ensure you read any email you receive from Deakin and follow the instructions carefully. Deakin University Student Association (DUSA) advocates are available free of charge if you need help understanding the process.

There are now standard outcomes for different types of academic integrity breaches. This means that you may choose to accept the standard outcome or ask for a review meeting.

You may lodge an appeal on specified grounds under the Student Appeals Procedure. When the University Appeals Committee has advised you of its final decision, you can seek an external review of the University’s decision-making process by the Victorian Ombudsman.

Dealing with honest mistakes

We want to educate our students about academic integrity and understand that sometimes honest mistakes are made.

Under our early intervention process, eligible students have a chance to correct unintentional areas of poor academic practice (for example, poor referencing or paraphrasing), and resubmit the work within seven days, rather than receive an allegation of a breach of academic integrity. This option is not available for timed assessments such as online quizzes, end-of-unit assessments or examinations.

You only get one chance at early intervention – any further breaches of academic integrity will be referred to the Academic Integrity Committee.

How it works

To be eligible for an early intervention, you cannot have:

• received more than one prior early intervention in a particular unit in the same study period
• received an early intervention in any unit in a previous study period
• used another student’s work
• drawn substantially on only one or two sources
• attempted to hide or disguise the poor academic practice.

Eligible students will be notified of the early intervention by the Unit Chair, including:

• details of the areas of concern in the submission (may include a Turnitin similarity report)
• the conditions applying to the resubmission
• the timeline and details associated with resubmission
• information on relevant University services.

If you accept, you must resubmit the work within the provided deadline, addressing the areas of poor academic practice.

Your Unit Chair will determine whether these have been sufficiently addressed and, if so, re-mark the task. For first-year units in an undergraduate or postgraduate course, you may earn the full range of available marks for a resubmitted task, but only a maximum of 50% for all other units.

If you are not eligible, do not accept the early intervention or resubmit without successfully addressing the areas of poor academic practice, you will be reported to the relevant Academic Integrity Committee (through the Office of the Dean of Students) for suspected breach of student academic integrity standards.