Period 29 & 30 – New OBU Information Pack – IMPORTANT

Dear Students,

Information Pack for submission period P29 and P30 has been released and there are not such major changes except few additional requirements and provide clarity on some important aspects of Research and Analysis Project (RAP)
Student must adhere all additional requirements and get clarity on important aspects for any subsequent submission of RAP to Oxford Brookes University (OBU).
Here is a brief summary of additional requirements / changes mentioned in latest Information Pack 2014-15.

a. Eligibility (Section 2,pg. 2)
b. Project Mentoring (Section 6,pg. 15)
c. Only OBU Approved Mentor is allowed to mentor students (Section 6.a para 2, pg.16)
d. Guidance on usage of latest financial reports for topic 8 and topic 15 (section 7.d.iv pg. 39)
e. Ensuring the academic integrity of your project (section 7.d.x pg. 42)
f. All projects submitted will be processed through TURNITIN. (section 8.a. pg. 50)
g. File Size (section 8.b. pg. 51)
h. Possible outcomes of guilty of academic misconduct (Appendix 6, pg. 78)
i. Detail guidance on Plagiarism and Cheating (Appendix 6, pg. 77-79)
j. Mitigating Circumstances (Appendix 7,pg. 80-81)

Detail of all above mentioned aspect provided here.

a. ELIGIBILITY

IMPORTANT: Changes to Paper F4 after June 2014

? Due to changes in the structure of Paper F4 which will take effect from the December 2014 exam sitting, the June 2014 F4 exam paper will be the last sitting that will meet the required proof of English proficiency for the degree.
? Any students who have successfully passed Paper F4 on or before June 2014 will continue to be able to use this as proof of English proficiency.
? Any students who take Paper F4 on or after December 2014 will require an alternative proof of English proficiency to meet the entrance requirements of Oxford Brookes University.
? Details of the qualifications that meet Oxford Brookes University’s proof of English proficiency can be found in the links below:

https://www.brookes.ac.uk/international/how-to-apply/english-languagerequirements/

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-on-applying-for-ukvisa-
approved-english-language-tests

? There is no change to the administration of eligibility for the programme. Proof of English proficiency will be continue to be administered by ACCA. Students do NOT need to send in proof of English proficiency to Oxford Brookes University.

b. PROJECT MENTORING

From January 2015 all mentors will have to have to successfully complete the approved on-line Mentoring course and be registered as Approved Mentors for the BSc in Applied Accounting on the website. This course will be available later in 2014 via the link https://www.oxfordbrookesmentoring.co.uk/.

Those mentors who have already completed the previous course will be transferred, subject to approval by OBU, to the new site.

c. APPROVED MENTOR

All mentors must be approved, if your mentor is not on the Approved Mentor list you will not be able to submit

Your on-line RAP submission will require you to enter contact details for your Project Mentor from the approved list (this is a drop-down list) and your Project Mentor will be required to confirm that they undertook your mentoring.

d. GUIDANCE ON USAGE OF LATEST FINANCIAL REPORTS FOR TOPIC 8 AND
TOPIC 15

The programme requirement is that you use the last 3 financial reports that are available, or will be available, at the start of the submission period. If the results are not going to be published in time for you to include them in your report, then you should use the previous 3 year’s results. The Programme Director has advised that any Company results that are published (in any form) less than 90 days before the start of submission do not have to be used.

Please consult pg. 39 of Information Pack for further detail.

e. ENSURING THE ACADEMIC INTEGRITY OF YOUR PROJECT

The University requires that your project is all your own work. Specifically that you have not copied your work from any other student, textbook, journal or similar source, either in small or large amounts. Students are permitted to use small amounts of quoted text, which must be fully referenced, but must not copy large sections of text and pass this off as their own work. See APPENDIX 3 for more details.

The University recommends that student check their own work against standard databases, and has identified WriteCheck™ (https://www.writecheck.com) as a suitable product for formative checking. as this does not permanently place the work in the database.

f. ALL PROJECTS SUBMITTED WILL BE PROCESSED THROUGH TURNITIN.

All projects submitted will be processed through TURNITIN. Previously, only limited projects (on sample basis) passed through TURNITIN.

For more details on this, please visit https://www.accaglobal.com/students/bsc/rules/cheating

g. FILE SIZE LIMITS

Please ensure that all of the files you want to upload and submit online are less than 10MB. Please ensure that the Word document containing the answers to the four SLS questions is less than 250Kb. Your presentation slides should be uploaded separately, preferably as a PowerPoint document.

? The Research Report should be a Word document.
? The Reference list should be a Word document.
? Any financial statements can be uploaded as pdf documents in the Appendices.
? While your presentation slides should be uploaded as a PowerPoint document, the rest of your SLS should be a Word document.
? Any supporting spreadsheets should be uploaded as Excel documents in the Appendices.

[Please note that you cannot submit zip files.]

h. POSSIBLE OUTCOMES OF GUILTY OF ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT

If the student is found guilty of academic misconduct there are a range of penalties that can apply as follows:

1. If the misconduct is not too great, for example parts of the RAP are plagiarised through lack of proper referencing, it is quite likely that the RAP will be given a 100% reduction of the grade ( a mark of Zero), failing the RAP. The student will be asked to submit a completely different project when resubmitting. Any resubmissions will, inevitably, be closely scrutinised to ensure that there is no repeat of the earlier misconduct.
2. In more serious cases of plagiarism or repeated cases, the case will be referred to the Academic Registrar of Oxford Brookes with a recommendation that the student is barred from making any further submissions to obtain the degree. This will certainly be the case where there is evidence of collusion or other form of cheating.
3. In these serious cases, the matter will be referred to ACCA for further disciplinary action, which could include suspension or permanent exclusion from membership of ACCA. This penalty could also apply to any other member involved in the misconduct, including any student whose work was copied.
4. As I mentioned earlier, serious cheating, such as buying as essay from a website is often also a criminal offence and, where appropriate, Oxford Brookes University would not hesitate to lay the evidence before the appropriate authorities to consider whether criminal proceedings should be instigated.

Link to download latest Information Pack 2014-15

https://business.brookes.ac.uk/undergraduate/2015/acca/files/information-pack.pdf

The most important change is that is now stated that it is COMPULSORY to use a comparator company for Topic 8 (though not for Topic 15)

Apart from the file sizes I have covered most of these points in summary in the FAQs that I have put on our home page (link below). I was also lucky enough to get an OBU marker to make some additional comments that should be useful as they give further insight 😀

https://opentuition.com/obu/obu-faq-frequently-asked-questions/