NCEA, Plagiarism, and AI (Artificial Intelligence)
As students are completing their internal assessments, they must ensure that their work is their own and authentic using their own words and ideas. If the assessment is not produced authentically, NZQA considers this as plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
From a NZQA perspective, plagiarism is:
Work copied directly from other sources but not cited in the student’s work.
Work copied from another student.
Students who allow their own work to be copied by another student.
Work that incorporates too much assistance from teachers, assessors, exemplars published on NZQA or TKI website, or from others at home.
Work that has been written, in whole or in part, by artificial intelligence tools e.g. ChatGPT, OpenAI, GoogleAI, etc.
How to use other authors’ work
Students are allowed to use quotes, information, and statistics from other sources and authors, providing this is used as support for their own ideas, and is cited or referenced in their own assignments. To cite sources, students must name the author and source for the work, and will add bibliographies and reference lists for these references. Information quoted in students’ work will use quotation marks and will be relevant to the points made by the students themselves. Subject teachers will work with their classes on the appropriate use of other source material.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and consequences of its use in NCEA assessments
With the increase of AI writing tools, students are being tempted to use these to write and create their assessments, and we have seen some instances of this in Term One this year. Often, this is obvious to the class teacher, as sentences and vocabulary may be different from the student’s previous work, or will not meet the requirements of the task. The school also uses current AI detection tools and will update these as necessary.
Students must be aware that there are serious consequences if their work has AI-generated material. Should work be found to be from AI sources, students will receive a Not Achieved grade automatically for that assessment and will not receive credits. They may also be advised that all further assessments are completed in class by handwriting.
NCEA Handbook on our school website
Please refer to the NCEA Handbook found on our website under the Learning - Curriculum drop-down menus. The handbook can be found at the bottom of the page. It contains information about NCEA, Appeals, Derived Grades, Misconduct, Reassessment/Resubmission of work, and Special Assessment Conditions. On the same page, there is a PowerPoint (NCEA Overview - In Our Own Words) giving information about NCEA and subject requirements for Level 2, plus links to the NZQA website itself.
Further information can be obtained from myself as Principal’s Nominee (Liaison with NZQA), or other teachers. My email is v.young@kaiapoi.school.nz
Vicki Young, Principal’s Nominee (NZQA)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14ITy_Gl7c7f4SBIvkQ3kKbIP-c8ZDHWeJWzvMiim6UU/edit