Plagiarism is a form of cheating which applies to all assessments and/or examinations. It is important not to intentionally nor unintentionally use someone else’s intellectual work and present it as your own. Students and delegates enrolled onto our programmes at the Centre for Coaching, International Academy for Professional Development, should not plagiarise. The professional bodies that approve, recognise and/or accredit our courses would normally have a plagiarism policy.
Avoiding Plagiarism
Plagiarism is taking an individual’s ideas, writings, thoughts, inventions, and passing them off as your own. Plagiarism is a complex topic that also has legal ramifications. When writing up assignments, plagiarism can occur unintentionally when an author’s work has not been referenced in the text or has been referenced incorrectly.
A correct example:
A cognitive definition of stress proposed by Palmer, Cooper and Thomas (2003) states that: ‘Stress occurs when the perceived pressure exceeds your ability to cope’ (p.2).
This direct quote has been referenced correctly. It includes the author names, the quote in italics to avoid ambiguity, year of publication and the page from which the quote can be found. Speech marks/inverted commas/quotation-marks are used to indicate the beginning and end of the precise written or verbal quote.
The following examples are incorrect and should always be avoided:
- A cognitive definition of stress proposed by Palmer, Cooper and Thomas (2003) states that stress occurs ‘when the perceived pressure exceeds your ability to cope’ (p.2).
- A cognitive definition of stress proposed by Palmer, Cooper and Thomas states that: ‘Stress occurs when the perceived pressure exceeds your ability to cope’.
- A cognitive definition of stress could be that stress occurs when the perceived pressure exceeds your ability to cope.
What happens if you plagiarise
Plagiarism can result in a grade of zero being given to the submitted assignment. This is a failure grade. It is important not to plagiarise intentionally or unintentionally when writing assignments.
Always reference work. We undertake checks for plagiarism by using systems such as grammarly.
Online plagiarism tutorial
The Indiana University has an online plagiarism tutorial which they allow other organisations to use for their students. The Centre recommends that students undertake the tutorial prior to writing up any assignment or research study for the Advanced Certificate/Diploma programmes.