Physical Education, Sport & Exercise Sciences: Writing

Among the resources for first-yeat students at Otago are:

• The University of Otago's First-Year Students website
• To develop Student Academic Skills, including writing you may wish to register for the sessions offered by PASS
• Writing and Language Development is also offered through the Student Academic Skills Team (Centre for Educational Design and Innovation).

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is defined as:

• Copying or paraphrasing another person's work and presenting it as your own.
• Being party to someone else's plagiarism by letting them copy your work or helping them to copy the work of someone else without acknowledgement.
• Using your own work multiple times without indicating the source. For example, resubmitting the same content when repeating a paper or submitting the same content in a different paper.

Plagiarism can be unintentional or intentional. Even if it is unintentional, it is still considered to be plagiarism.

Unintentional plagiarism may occur when:

• A number of assignments are due at the same time and so you take less care
• You have not planned for an assignment so run out of time to complete it
• You did not make good notes from some of the sources for the assignment
• You have poor study practices
• You are feeling stressed for some other reason

Intentional plagiarism may be due to the factors listed above but by definition it is a deliberate act and you are aware of it. Therefore it is deemed dishonest and considered to be a more serious offence.

All students have a responsibility to be aware of acceptable academic practice in relation to the use of material prepared by others and are expected to take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure no breach of acceptable academic practice occurs. You should also be aware that plagiarism is easy to detect and the University has policies in place to deal with it.

**The image "Avoiding Plagiarism" is linked