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.

If you’re investigated for an alleged breach of academic integrity, you may receive an allegation.

You will be able to respond before a decision is made – 5 working days from the receipt of the allegation. The Academic Integrity Committee may accept a late response, up to 10 working days after the allegation was sent, where you can provide supporting material or documents to show how exceptional circumstances prevented you from responding by the deadline. Failure to check email is not an exceptional circumstance.

If you do receive an allegation of a suspected breach of academic integrity standards, ensure you read the 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 standard outcomes for different types of academic integrity breaches. You have the option to:

• accept the standard proposed outcome, or
• request a review meeting to discuss the allegation.

If you do not respond to the allegation, it will be considered substantiated, and the standard outcome proposed will be applied.

Review meeting

If you choose to request a review meeting, you can elect to attend and will need to provide a written response along with documentation to support your situation. DUSA advocates can assist you preparing this. After the review meeting has been conducted, you will receive the outcome notice via your student email within 5 working days of the meeting.

Potential outcomes

Breaching academic integrity can result in outcomes 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.

Where a breach of academic integrity standards is substantiated, 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 National Student Ombudsman.

Dealing with honest mistakes

Deakin understands 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, 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 Student Success Division) for suspected breach of student academic integrity standards.