All staff and learners are expected to maintain high standards of academic honesty and integrity.
General misconduct is where a learner acts dishonestly, harasses other learners or staff, interferes with students or staff, prevents or disrupts the learning of others, disobeys/fails to comply with contractual or legal requirements, damages or steals EOT property or Intellectual Property (IP) or the property of others, alters, defaces or improperly accesses EOTs documents or records, prejudices the reputation of EOT or otherwise acts in an improper manner.
General misconduct includes the misuse of any facility in a manner which is illegal or which is or will be detrimental to the rights or property of others. This includes the misuse, in any way, of any computing or communications equipment or capacity to which the learner has access.
Academic misconduct is defined as any attempt to cheat, falsify, plagiarise or otherwise act dishonestly in undertaking an assessment task, or assisting other learners to do so. This includes any attempt to gain advantage from unauthorised possession or use of EOTs learning or assessment materials or other intellectual property.
Learners may be accused of cheating if they seek to gain advantage by unfair means such as copying another students’ work, or in any way mislead or deceive a trainer/assessor about their knowledge, identity, ability, or the amount of original work they have done. Cheating can include collusion or plagiarism or any other method of presenting the work of another person without acknowledgment or referencing.
Cheating may also include breaching any process for undertaking assessment tasks, compromising the assessment activities of other learners, or impersonating a learner or facilitating a person to impersonate a learner in any assessment activity.
Any attempt or conspiracy to attempt academic misconduct is still academic misconduct, regardless of whether or not the attempt was successful.
For the purpose of assessment preparation and submission, learners are not permitted to work in collaboration with others.
Any person accused of misconduct are regarded as innocent of the alleged misconduct until they have either admitted to it or been found by proper inquiry to have so behaved.
Where general or academic misconduct has occurred by a learner, EOT will take disciplinary action. This action may include, but is not limited to:
- A formal caution being issued;
- A requirement to re-sit an assessment or undertake additional assessment, at additional cost to the leaner;
- Cancellation of enrolment regardless of progress;
- Exclusion from future enrolment with EOT, and/or
- Report incidents that are not compliant with EOT’s Academic Conduct Policy to the appropriate regulator, where required by regulations or licensing conditions.
Learners are notified in writing of penalties as a consequence of any misconduct. The grounds for appeal are:
- Procedural irregularities, and/or
- Factual errors on which the decision was based and which were of such magnitude as to invalidate the decision.
Appeals must be lodged in writing with the Training Operations Manager by writing to appeals@eot.edu.au within 20 days of the date of the learner being notified of the penalty. The appeal process commences within 10 working days from the date of receipt of the learner’s appeal.
The process for making an appeal depends on the nature of the alleged misconduct and may require one or more of the following:
- A written statement
- A statutory declaration
- Evidence disputing the charge of misconduct
In the event that a learner has engaged in academic misconduct or general misconduct and the penalty includes cancellation of enrolment resulting in the learner being unable to receive the unit of competency, and/or exclusion from other EOT courses, EOT will review the offence to determine if there are grounds for a refund.
Whether or not a refund is granted is at the discretion of EOT. A decision will be made in line with EOT’s Refund Policy. If a refund is granted, EOT will deduct an administration fee from the refund amount for time and resources used in providing administrative support services to the learner. The administration fee is 50% of the course(s) and any other relevant fees (current 01/01/2019).
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