This page provides information to students about appeals against the decision of an Academic Misconduct Committee.
It is important that you read the information on this page before submitting your appeal.
Academic Integrity is a commitment to approaching your academic work honestly. It is about owning your work, developing your own academic voice, and referencing the research and ideas of others.
When you submit work that is not your own, this is known as academic misconduct.
When you submit work that is found to contain plagiarism or other breaches of Academic Integrity, the Chair of the Divisional Academic Misconduct Committee will investigate the matter and recommend an appropriate penalty. In some cases, the Chair may refer your case to the Divisional Academic Misconduct Committee.
Penalties are applied in accordance with the seriousness of the offence and can range from a formal warning to termination of studies.
All types of academic misconduct are considered under the principle of strict liability. This means that whether you intended to commit an academic misconduct offence or not, is not of relevance.
For any reason other than asking for a clarification of what your penalty means, you can submit a formal appeal within 28-calendar days of receiving the outcome of your case. We will treat this as a valid reason for not submitting an early resolution request.
OR
You can submit an early resolution request only if you want to to ask for a clarification of your penalty within 7-calendar days of receiving the outcome of your academic misconduct case.
You will receive an outcome from your Division within 14 calendar days.
If you are dissatisfied with the Division’s response, you will need to submit a formal appeal within 7 calendar days of receiving the outcome from the Division.
You can submit an appeal against the decision of the Academic Misconduct Committee or its Chair if you have experienced one of the following grounds and have evidence to demonstrate this.
Under what circumstances would I make an appeal on the grounds of Administrative, Clerical or Procedural Error?
Examples of administrative, clerical or procedural error include:
Under what circumstances would I make an appeal on the grounds of illness or other extenuating circumstances?
You can appeal on these grounds if you can provide evidence of illness or other extenuating circumstances that have had a negative impact on your academic performance.
You will have to give a reason for not previously providing this evidence to your Division through the Extenuating Circumstances request process.
It’s important to remember that illness or extenuating circumstances does not qualify as an “excuse” or reason why misconduct occurred. However, you may wish to provide more evidence on the circumstances surrounding the misconduct through the appeals process.
Examples of illness or other extenuating circumstances include:
This list is not exhaustive.
Completing coursework too late and missing deadlines because of computer or transport difficulties, losing work not backed up digitally, normal employment commitment or ailing to read an examination timetable or other instructions correctly are not normally considered as extenuating circumstances.
Under what circumstances would I make an appeal under the grounds of Bias?
You can appeal under these grounds if you believe there is evidence of bias or a reasonable perception of bias in how the Academic Misconduct Committee or its Chair reached the outcome (penalty) of your case.
This is, that the Academic Misconduct Committee or its Chair have not been impartial when assessing your case.
Please note that you have to provide evidence of bias when appeal under these grounds.
Under what circumstances would I make an appeal under the grounds of Unreasonable outcome or Penalty?
You can appeal under these grounds if you believe that the penalty or outcome which you received was unreasonable given the evidence you submitted or the evidence which was otherwise available to the Academic Misconduct Committee or its Chair when reviewing your case.
This includes examples of receiving a penalty that may be deemed too severe given the nature of the misconduct.
Remember, that you cannot provide new evidence when submitting an appeal under these grounds.
There are no circumstances that would allow you to appeal against academic judgement.
Academic judgement is defined as an opinion that can only be given by an academic expert, for example, a judgement about marks awarded for assessment, progression, degree classification or the achievement of course outcomes.
Decisions by an Academic Misconduct Committee or its Chair are made on the balance of probabilities. This means that decisions on allegations of academic misconduct will be based on whether the Chair of the Academic Misconduct Committee believes, given the information available, it is more likely that the allegation is true, or untrue. Where an academic judgment is made it will normally be evidence based.
