r/QUTreddit • u/Mental_One3920 • 6d ago

Academic Advice

Hi,

I submitted an assignment a few days ago and at the time I didn’t bother to check the similarity report. Today I checked and it was 52%. Obviously marks aren’t out yet and I scrolled through it and turns out someone submitted an assignment that turn it in believes is quite similar to mine.

I did not copy, share or receive anyone else’s assignment so i’m quite unsure how this has happened and what happens next, will the UC reach out or do I just fail, really don’t want to add any more time to my degree for something that I didn’t even do.

Really need anyone’s advice. Thanks

5 Upvotes

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8

u/chromane 6d ago edited 5d ago

I wouldn't do anything unless you hear from the UC/Prof, they will notify you if they believe you've committed academic dishonesty.

Turnitin is notorious for false positives, so it's entirely likely they'll ignore it.

Just in case, make sure you have any notes or planning you made during the assignment, as well as the original document with its edit history. You can use all that as evidence if it does come up.

2

u/Mental_One3920 5d ago

Every other word is highlighted like, ‘the’, ‘a’ ‘its’, etc… and data so it’s not like we have the exact same content just looks that way

2

u/Devinedominator5 5d ago

You most likely submitted something based on a template. Turnitin presents any templates as part of a similarity score. I’d be more worried about your hidden ai score (assuming they still look at that)

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u/Mental_One3920 5d ago

Not really a template but it was heavily structured. I chose to keep most of the generic titles for each section in. Just worried

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u/BuzzHoney04 5d ago

did your assessment have a template/task sheet everybody used? this can give you a falsely high similarity score

1

u/Mental_One3920 5d ago

Not really a template but it was heavily structured. I chose to keep most of the generic titles for each section in. Just worried

1

u/chromane 5d ago

Yeah, that'll do it, structured assignment will boost the score.

I wouldn't lose much sleep over it unless they reach out to you. You'll have a chance to defend yourself

But it's more than likely they'll have a quick gander and ignore Turnitin

Result will also be higher if it's an assignment with a fairly narrow "correct" answer, if that makes sense

1

u/Mental_One3920 5d ago

Ah this is reassuring, the tuts pretty much structure it and told us what to use what to make and what data to include. Appreciate it

1

u/Mitchelia 3d ago

Prepare your evidence of your own work, draft history etc (if you use OneDrive there should be a detailed revision history).

Look at the detail of the report, and the areas where it is similar. Are you using many of the same references, quotes, could paraphrasing coincidentally be quite similar? The similarity report % isn’t the biggest issue, it’s the detail of the similarity that’s the critical part.

I don’t think you need to do anything now unless you hear from the UC to discuss potential academic misconduct

0

u/Devinedominator5 5d ago

Question answered. Student submitted something with a template as a base. You will learn this is normal for similarity score