The university must ensure that certain exams are undertaken in a controlled environment. During these exams the University will take all reasonable precautions to ensure no student has gained any unfair academic advantage. This ensures all students are given equal opportunity to perform at their best.
Invigilators, or proctors, monitor you while you take these exams to ensure there is no plagiarism, collusion, cheating, fabrication of data or possession of unauthorised materials. This is done for ‘in-person’ exams as well as ‘remote’ online exams:
- In- person exams: When you take an exam in a centre then invigilators attend the exam, control timings and monitor exam attendees.
- Remote exams: When you take an exam remotely on a computer we ask you to download Inspera software (detailed in section 5) so a recording can be made during your exam of your movements, keystrokes and any background sounds. Invigilators review these recordings before results are released.
Programme teams closely review any issues raised by invigilators and decide if there is sufficient concern, in which case they contact the student to discuss the allegation. If the Programme team are still concerned that there has been a breach in regulations, they will escalate the case to BPP’s Office of Regulation and Compliance (ORC).
ORC will follow up with the student and an Academic Misconduct Panel to conduct a formal process to review whether academic malpractice has taken place and any follow-up actions which will need to be taken.
Academic malpractice can be either:
- Poor Academic Practice - requires a remedy
or
- Academic Misconduct – mitigating circumstances are considered and a penalty is determined.
Full details are found in BPP’s Manual of Policies and Procedures and summary guides are in section 10 ‘What to do if things go wrong’.
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Type of Academic Malpractice:
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Academic Misconduct
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Poor Academic Practice
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Definition:
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“any act, or attempted act, leading to circumstances whereby a student might gain an unpermitted or unfair advantage in an assessment or in the determination of results, whether by advantaging themselves or by advantaging or disadvantaging
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“an inept or inadvertent breach of the conventions or regulations of academic practice, committed through a defensible ignorance of those conventions and regulations, where no distinguishable advantage may be or has been accrued to the student, and where there is no discernible intention to deceive”
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Forms:
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- Plagiarism
- Collusion
- Fabrication
- Impersonation
- Contract Cheating
- Misrepresentation
- Unauthorised Possession or Reference
- Bribery/ intimidation
- Breach of the Rubrics of Assessment
- False Attribution
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Penalty or remedy:
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Penalties can include:
- Activity with educational benefit
- Written warning in student’s file
- Voiding the assessment
- Reporting to the professional body
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Remedy:
- Addressed through correction & education by Programme Leader
- Advantage is removed, e.g. by voiding assessment
- Repeated incidents may be treated as academic misconduct.
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