If you have received notification that your result is deferred pending an ACO investigation, it is as well to remember that a significant percentage of results are withheld initially. There can be many reasons why, so you should not panic unless you know that you have been involved in copying, collusion and serious plagiarism (the Type 2 sort as indicated in the FAQs on our OBU Forum Homepage).
Although you are desperate to know how you did, any university is equally desperate to protect its reputation and standing and cannot risk conferring a degree on any student whose work is open to question. This means that if there has been the slightest hint that the student has infringed the rules or the work they have presented may not be their own then it must be investigated further. All of this takes time as the number of cases at the end of the marking period apparently could run into several hundred. So although it is disappointing and frustrating that you are ‘left in limbo’ pending the outcome of a preliminary investigation, provided you have done your research and analysis yourself and written your work then you should not worry unduly. It may take a month or so but ultimately you should find that the investigation has been satisfactorily completed and your will get your result.
However if you have attempted to cheat and your results are withheld then it is likely that the University is “on the case”.
As the Forum Moderator I have in the past received ‘begging letters’ from students asking for my help and advice, as too late in the day they realise, when they are caught that they should not have cheated. I am usually sympathetic to most student problems but this is one where I am not prepared to go as I have repeatedly warned students that they must do their work themselves. Any underhand method to secure a degree is reprehensible, so my answer now is: “You got yourself into this mess, now get yourself out of it!”
For anyone out there who is feeling smug because you think you have been so smart to outwit Turnitin
(a) you may be in for a nasty surprise (there are more ways than just Turnitin that are used by universities to discover plagiarism and collusion) and
(b) how come if you are that smart you couldn’t do the work for yourself in the first place?
Please see my article on the Academic Conduct Office (ACO) on our OBU home page for further information.
Trephena – OBU Forum Moderator
Other Accountancy Qualifications
Results withheld / deferred
I think you should be all right - so I advise you not to panic provided you did your work yourself. There can be all sorts of reasons that the mentor name is not showing. For example with the new website all mentors were asked to confirm their details so that the list of mentors was up to date. If your mentor failed to confirm their details their name may not have been transferred over.
Occasionally if a mentor has a significant number of ACO cases which indicate a breach of mentoring standards they can be removed. However if your work was original and all your own there should not be an issue. If there is a question mark about it in the first instance your work will be referred to the ACO for investigation but I would suggest that you don't worry about something that may never happen....
Has anyone received comments from ACO for results withheld for period 40?
My project for period 40 was referred to ACO but i haven't received any comment from ACO as of yet. Any idea why it is taking so long? It has been more than 2 months since my case was referred to ACO.
I have also not heard from the officer. :-(
Hoping for a positive response by end of this year.
Any update on reply from ACO? Did anyone received it yet?
Hi,
I submitted my RAP in period 40 and my case was referred to ACO. However, its been 3 months now and i have not receive any communication from an ACO. I once emailed and received a reply that i should wait further few weeks. Does this means that my report might be clear and there might be no querry to be made by ACO?
Unfortunately I think it is more likely to indicate that they have a backlog.
You are not the only student who has been waiting this long - and it is deplorable as it leaves you in limbo.
I can only suggest 'Pester Power' - email each week and possibly say that being kept waiting this length of time is unreasonable as you need to be able to plan your studies effectively!
Hello. No response till now.
ACO is quite, it's now over 3 months. I'm getting worried what's going on.
Did any of you emailed to OBU since ACO is quite? What was there response ?
Hello. the ACO contacted me yesterday and said that he will revert with his questions shortly.
dear sir/madam, i have received an email from oxford brookes regarding my RAP and SLS, it says that it was found to have significant matches, even though it was done by me and so they asked for evidence?
i would like to know that what type of evidence are they asking for?
They need to see the various drafts that went between you and your mentor as these will show how your work built up.
Sometimes the work can in 'theory' be a student's own work but there is so much material copied and pasted in that effectively very little is 'original' thought.
I interestingly had a case when I was an academic conduct officer where a student insisted until the bitter end that the SLS was written by him -however it was 80% the same as one submitted a year earlier! In fact the student's report had poor punctuation and a bad writing style and the earlier SLS was beautifully punctuated in well written English. What would Sherlock Holmes.have concluded?
well can i share the hand written notes?
These are nor really reliable evidence. As both a former ACO officer and now a mentor I am fully aware iof the genuine mentoring process - I receive copies of drafts from my students- these are 'timestamped' by the system so there is proof of when they were produced by the student and reviewed by me. Hand written notes lack this proof.
Also as an ACO I heard every excuse in the book as to why electronic drafts were not available - students as in the case cited above tried to play me for the fool. - ACO officers are not idiots and hate being treated as such - the facts often speak for themselves. If you wish to clear your name then produce the original electronic documents
Hi Trephana,
I received an email last night stating that my results are with held and transferred to ACO for investigation, of course I am super worried.
Can you please guide me what should be my next steps, should I reply them back asking why or should I wait for their email? Also can you guide me a little of what all should I be prepared with regarding the details they can ask. Also I had a terrible sleep less night can you tell me what be the worst case scenario if I am unable to satisfy them? Please guide :(
Hello trephana
at this point do u think screen shots of exchanged emails and whatsapp chats carrying dates of conversation would surfice
Probably not. The real proof of originality of work is the drafts. Where there has been genuine mentorship and the work is the student's there should be at least 3 drafts showing how the report evolved. These go beyond emails and conversations.
When these aren't forthcoming and excuses are made the ACO are likely to conclude that either a disreputable mentor wrote the whole thing or it was commissioned from a writing service. The ACO have heard every excuse in the book as to why such files no longer exist but in these days of iCloud and Google Drive the only plausible explanation is that such drafts never existed in the first place!
sorry to ask but what do mean when u say "drafts"
It would be highly unusual to write a 7,500 word report all in one go without sending various parts of it to the mentor as it builds up e.g. the regular process would be send the mentor the first instalment of say, 2 500 words for comment and review. Then normally the mentor would add notes on the script. The student would subsequently update / amend their work and then send a second revised instalment and possibly a third. So every student should have copies of these 'drafts' and in an inability for the student or a mentor to be able to produce these would tend to indicate as I said above, that the work was not done by the student at all but written by a third party.
what can serve as proof for an SLS with 35% turnitin plagiarism report.
Although previous drafts may not be available for an SLS , there are still hurdles to be surmounted as although about 10% (approx 200 words) may be explainable by common headings and themes, that still leaves 25% which is going to be more difficult to 'explain away'....
The fact is Turnitin does identify copied passages quite accurately (after all that is what the software is designed to do). It will even identify it to the other student(s) (registration numbers and when they submitted) so you will have to find some good reasons to explain the phenomenon of why your work matches . This is far harder the fewer the number e.g. 25% to 25 different sources is explainable as just random, whereas 25% to just one or two is not.... Where exact expressions and grammatical errors are made it becomes even harder .
So you will need to get your story straight - ask for a copy of the Turnitin report -then you know what you are up against
Hi Trephena
I have just received a request for supporting evidence for my OBU. The RAP currently stands at 71% on turnitin. I know this is really bad, I think its mainly copying online. I assumed putting reference was okay. only discovered later my errors.
I just need to know the best way to respond. I dont want to end up being in trouble. willing to redo it if l have to. please help.
Thanks
Unfortunately although it is good that you referenced, it is not good as you have found out the hard way, just to copy and paste passages into your work. This is termed 'bad academic practice' as it does not show that you can think for yourself. (We do warn against this practice in our Referencing Guide - see Golden Rule 10)
With a score of 71% it will certainly be failed. However you have asked about what to do. If you have earlier drafts and versions of your report you could send them to your ACO officer and explain about the copying and pasting. That should bring a quick resolution. They will make you write a new report for resubmission. Sometimes this may have to be on a new company or different topic - it depends who is dealing with your case and the full facts - but they will inform you of this in their decision letter..
The important thing to remember for your new report is that you must use direct citations from sources sparingly - the idea is that you select key points from them and then express them in your own words.
Good luck!
Hi everyone.
My SLS turnitin report indicated 16% and said that I had copied other students’ work. I hadn’t and have done everything by myself. What evidences can I give as I do not own any drafts and rarely any conversation with my mentor regarding SLS? Please assist me thank you.
It depends on what has been matched - have you seen the actual report - as the titles and very common phrases are sometimes picked up?
16% represents about 320 words approximately and if you have a cover sheet and repeated the questions these may account for about 60 matching words which would then result in a score of only 9%. Given common themes this would appear to be negligible unless however all of this 9% matched to one PARTICULAR student, where it might start to look more suspicious as the chances of one having a match above 1% to any one individual [rather than a 1% x 9 to a variety of students] would be VERY unlikely to have happened by mere chance.
I agree that it is unusual to have earlier drafts of the SLS. However have you discussed the matching with your mentor? I do not wish to cast aspersions but if it is a match to just one other student, did you send a copy of your SLS to the mentor to review and could they possibly have let another student view it? Needless to say this would be at the very least a breach of confidentiality and potentially unethical unless you had given your prior permission
Hi Gillian
I have 44% RAP & SLS Match including 24% from one previous RAP. I submitted my own written RAP and the RAP with which it is matching is from P35 which had a different sector from P41. I already have compiled one word file where i have gathered all the information sources quoted in the RAP. I have two queries pertaining to this:
What other evidence would you suggest that would be appropriate to satisfy the ACO regarding its legitimacy?
What will be the possible implications in this regard with respect to this case?
If it was a different topic then presumably the matching material is more generic in the report [description of models and methods?] and generalised comments in the SLS? However a 24% match to one particular source is almost a quarter and therefore significant, and could not be just chance. I don't see how you can explain this as legitimate as the conclusion would be that your submission cannot be construed as all of your own work.
Realistically based on previous experience, you are facing a zero grade [a fail for everything] because as the matching implies, all of the work is not yours and you had access to another RAP which is forbidden under the University rules. Sorry, but it is always folly to share work or study examples from other people's work and a reputable mentor would never condone this.
You will probably be allowed to resubmit by doing a new report but the deferred work will be counted as one of your submissions so you will only be allowed two further attempts and can only get a grade C under the resubmission rules.
Hi Gillian!
Many thanks for your response. The ACO has imposed a penalty of fail grade but has mentioned that "If you are eligible you are permitted to resubmit your research report and Skills
and Learning Statement with corrections". I am not clear as to whether i have been allowed to resubmit the same with corrections and that the results will be capped with C grade or not. Can you please explain what does this statement implies?
It sounds as if because you have cited, “If you are eligible you are permitted to resubmit your research report and Skills and Learning Statement with corrections", that you can strip out the places that showed the matches and replace them with new material but check too whether there were any specific elements failed e.g, Analysis and evaluation and detailed marker feedback because there could be 2 potential issues.
The first is that they failed it for plagiarism and the second one being it had already been failed on some parts by the marker - in which case you need to address both things. If in doubt go back to the ACO and if you haven't been sent the marker feedback, then request it.
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