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Assessment at Otago

There are a number of ways course work can be submitted for assessment.

These include but are not limited to: email; uploading to Blackboard or Moodle; and by standard post. It is very important to know how your department prefers to receive assignment material. Please follow any advice given in your course book or study guide. Do not hesitate to contact your course administrator or coordinator if you are unsure how to proceed.

You are strongly encouraged to save and retain a copy of all your assignment work. In the rare event of loss or damage after submitting an assignment, the copy enables re-submission without distress to or further work by the student affected.

Assignments, no matter how they are sent, need to be clearly identified with your name, student ID number, paper code and number, and where applicable, the module, unit and/or assignment number. This will ensure smooth and safe processing. If your department has a coversheet template, you should attach a completed coversheet to each assignment.

Late Submission and Extensions

Some teaching teams impose penalties for assignments that are submitted late. Please check your course material at the beginning of your course to see if these apply to you. There may even be policy variations within a single programme and between departments. If you are unable to reach the appropriate academic staff member with your extension request you should forward this to your course administrator to pass on.

Please note that granting extensions requires adequate reason and that, in some instances, an extension might not be possible (for example, when a subsequent web conference or an online discussion forum has already reviewed the answers of other students).

Return of Assignments

Your assignments will be returned as soon as marking is completed and the grades have been recorded. If you are concerned about delay in assignments being returned, please contact your course administrator or the teaching staff concerned. The University appreciates that the timely return of assessed work is especially important for distance students.

Academic Integrity, Misconduct and Plagiarism

Academic integrity is “the basis for ethical decision-making and behaviour in an academic context. This is reflected in norms of acceptable academic practice and is informed by the values of honesty, trust, responsibility, fairness, respect and courage.” (The Academic Integrity Policy can be found here.)

Academic misconduct is a breach of academic integrity. Simply, this means seeking to gain for yourself, or assisting another person to gain, an academic advantage by deception or other unfair means. The most common form of academic misconduct is plagiarism.

Academic misconduct in relation to work submitted for assessment (including all course work, tests, and examinations) is taken very seriously at the University of Otago.

All students have a responsibility to understand the requirements that apply to particular assessments and also to be aware of acceptable academic practice regarding the use of material prepared by others. Therefore it is important to be familiar with the rules surrounding academic misconduct at the University of Otago; they may be different from the rules in your previous place of study.

Any student involved in academic misconduct, whether intentional or arising through failure to take reasonable care, will be subject to the University's Student Academic Misconduct Procedures which contain a range of penalties.

If you are ever in doubt concerning what may be acceptable academic practice in relation to assessment, you should clarify the situation with your lecturer before submitting the work or taking the test or examination involved. Detailed information about Academic Integrity and Academic Misconduct at the University of Otago can be found here.

Useful information about plagiarism, how to avoid it, and where to get help can be found here.

Acknowledge your Information Sources!

You can find out more about plagiarism (and how to avoid it), using the Online Information Literacy's module: Essay writing with readings module. Use the left-hand menu to navigate to the section, Use Information. Within this section learn more about citing and plagiarism.

More information about managing your references and citation styles is available in the following section of the Guide to the Library 2019. You'll find information about references, citation styles, and reference management software.

Further information about citation styles is available on the Library’s Referencing and Citation Styles page.