Including made-up content in your assessments

Your work, such as reports of laboratory or practical work, or dissertation research results, must not contain material that is untrue and/or made up.

Why is this a problem?

Making-up results, or other content, is dishonest and totally devalues any assessment. We cannot allow you to make false academic claims, or to gain credit for work that you have not done.

What can I do to avoid problems with my work?

1) Plan your work carefully to ensure that you are using appropriate methods of research and data collection.

2) Build time into your plans to address any initial problems with research and data collection.

3) Ask advice from your supervisor, tutor or module leader if you think that your efforts are not going to generate the information you need.

What are the penalties if something goes wrong?

Inventing material and making false claims about the amount of work that you have done are both serious breaches of academic integrity. Penalties range from a requirement to submit new work for a reduced or zero mark to permanent exclusion from the University. For more information, see the Academic Misconduct Procedure available on the Student Cases webpage.