1. General provisions

1.1 The document establishes the procedure for preventing, processing and imposing penalties for a student’s violation of good academic practice and contemptible conduct in the School of Information Technologies.

1.2 The Procedure for Processing a Student’s Violation of Good Academic Practice and Contemptible Conduct in the School of Information Technologies is based on the following documents: Academic Policies and Principles of Academic Ethics (Code of Academic Ethics).

1.3 According to the Academic Policies, the following activities are deemed a violation of good academic practice:
1.3.1 use of support materials and technical aids upon a knowledge test, except those explicitly allowed by the teacher;
1.3.2 making use of any other help from others (prompting, copying, copying homework, using learning support forums, buying papers, the use of an additional program to obtain automated responses, using unauthorised generative AI, etc.) upon a knowledge test or violation of the examination procedure by the student;
1.3.3 plagiarism, i.e. submitting another person’s writing under one’s own name or extensive rewording of someone else’s work, referencing or quoting without proper academic reference;
1.3.4 re-submission of one’s own work when this has already been taken into account in the final grade;
1.3.5 participating in an assessment for another student or allowing another person to participate in an assessment in one’s own name;
1.3.6 malicious disclosure of papers assessed;
1.3.7 deliberate submission of untrue information (false information) in one’s papers, applications (including APEL), etc.;
1.3.8 damaging the reputation of the university, which includes providing ungrounded negative value judgements concerning the university, unauthorised mediation of the study opportunities and services provided by the university or compilation and dissemination of materials promoting the university for the purposes of material gain and other activities causing material damage or damage to the reputation of the university.
1.3.9 other cases arising from the Code of Academic Ethics established by the Senate.

1.4 Contemptible conduct is a violation of generally accepted standards of conduct The provisions of this document regarding violation of good academic practice are applied also to cases of contemptible conduct.

1.5 If a student violates the good academic practice or generally accepted standards of conduct, the dean has, depending on the gravity of violation, the right to:
1.5.1 issue a letter of reprimand to the student;
1.5.2 request that the Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs exmatriculate the student;
1.5.3 cancel the learning agreement concluded with the external student extraordinarily.

1.6 Letters of reprimand and other relevant documents on a case shall be stored in the Dean’s office of the School of Information Technologies.

1.7 The lecturer is obliged to inform students of the rules of examination and the requirements for the form and content of student papers at the beginning of the course.

2. Procedure in the case of detection of a student’s violation of good academic practice and contemptible conduct

2.1 A lecturer is obliged to monitor whether students’ papers comply with the requirements laid down in terms of both form and content, and to address violations of good academic practice and contemptible conduct.

2.2 A lecturer has the right to remove a student form a knowledge test or refuse to assess the assignment submitted to him/her if the student is making use of help from others or violates the university’s good academic practice in any other way. In this case, the lecturer shall mark “0” (failed) or “M” (failed) as the result of the specific knowledge test or the final grade.

2.3 If violation of good academic practice or contemptible conduct occurs, the lecturer has a right to submit an overview of the incident along with other relevant documents (a comparison between the presented text/source code and the original source (including referencing mistakes), e-mails, examination papers presented under someone else’s name, support materials used during an exam, overlapping homework solutions, etc.) to the Vice-Dean for Academic Affairs together with a proposal to issue a letter of reprimand. The lecturer shall simultaneously inform the student of initiation of the proceedings.

2.4 The chairman of the defence committee is obliged to ensure that graduation theses are checked using a plagiarism detection system before the defence to exclude the possibility of plagiarism.

2.5 If plagiarism occurs in a graduation thesis, the chairman of the defence committee has the right to refuse to allow a thesis to be defended. The chairman of the defence committee is obliged to notify the Vice-Dean for Academic Affairs of the violation of good academic practice.

2.6 The Vice-Dean for Academic Affairs has the right to request further explanations from the student. If a violation is detected, the Vice-Dean for Academic Affairs has the right, depending on the gravity of the violation and previous offences, to make a proposal to the Dean to issue a letter of reprimand to the student, to exmatriculate the student or to cancel the learning agreement concluded with the external student extraordinarily.

2.7 If necessary (possible different interpretations of evidence, strong arguments presented by the student, no common understanding is achieved with the student regarding the violation, repeated violation, a reasoned request is submitted by the student in a format that can be reproduced in writing, etc.), the Vice-Dean for Academic Affairs has the right to form an ad hoc committee for discussing the incident of misconduct.

2.8 The student shall be given an opportunity to explain his/her conduct and defend himself/herself before the committee. If a violation is detected, the committee has the right to make a proposal to the Dean for issuing a letter of reprimand, for exmatriculation of the student or to cancel the learning agreement concluded with the external student extraordinarily, depending on the gravity of the act and the existence of previous violations.

2.9 In the case of a first-time violation of good academic practice, a letter of reprimand will be issued to the student and the lecturer has the right to deprive the student of the opportunity to take the exam or pass the course related to the discovered case. In the case of a second violation of good academic practices, the Dean has the right to propose to the Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs that the student be exmatriculated or that the learning agreement concluded with the external student be cancelled extraordinarily.

2.10 When several students submit a written work the content of which clearly overlaps, due to getting it from the internet, social media or otherwise, all the students who have submitted an overlapping homework will be considered to have conducted contemptibly.

3. Disputing decisions

3.1 A student has the right to dispute administrative acts and procedures concerning studies, in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act, the terms and conditions laid down in TalTech regulations, and the exceptions arising from other legislation.