Investigation into possible plagiarism

6 is done as well.. so what next . maybe remote working they can still send from home

 

Yes, you are probably right. I'm worried about being convicted for a crime I didn't commit but of late I realise that these things happen! Your points are entirely correct.

 

Ok no emails so far so that's reassuring

 

has anyone received the actual letter?

 

I received the plagiarism letter on Thursday – few hours after I got the initial shock of the blanket email.

In their personal letter to me, they are saying that my answers match previous examiners reports for two different questions in the paper (not the entire question but sub questions within). They have said that I can provide information that may aid their investigation and this needs to be submitted before 17th December.

It was a sickening feeling reading this letter. I cannot believe that after the time I have spent in grafting and grinding through these exams – on my last one to qualification they are accusing me of cheating on it, which I did not.

I can’t come up with the words to describe my disappointment and this incidence has confirmed my decision that in the long term – I need to get out of this profession.

I took SA3 and it was my 3rd attempt (yes this exam was proving to be my kryptonite). Over the course of these 3 sittings, I have made many personal notes – all of which have come from past paper solutions, acted materials and core reading. I did not note down where I got all the points from - why would I need to ? They are my personal notes.

Having taken exam counselling on CA1 a few years back, I was advised to focus my revision on past paper practise and use the examiners reports & mark schemes to understand how to answer questions. This became part of my revision strategy.

This incident is causing me severe stress and has triggered some serious anxiety.

I am so glad to have found this forum as I did not know where to turn. I did not sit this exam in April, but of what I read on this forum I might have been in the same position then.

I would be really grateful for those who have gone through the process in the summer to share what they can to help me put my case forward. What kind of things did you go back to them with, as I am struggling as to what I should respond with ?

Did anyone seek legal advise on this issue?

I would also like to ask the approach taken by others on discussing this with their employers. My stance on this is that I plan to discuss it with my manager as I haven’t done anything wrong. However, I am concerned that stuff like this spreads quickly and reputation damaged even when it is not true.

 

Sorry that this has happened to you. I attempted to get round the personal notes issue by referencing them in my answers and stating where they were collated from at the start of the script.

I suggest that you say that you would have referenced the course material but were unable to do so as you had created your personal notes over several sittings and so did not know where you had originally got individual bits of your notes from.

The instruction to reference was only added to the FAQs a couple of weeks before the sitting which was insufficient to trace the references from scratch whilst still preparing for the exam. As such you attempted to rewrite material from your notes in the exam as it was the only choice left to you but apparently you were unsuccessful.

Best of luck.

 

To anyone else who has received the actual letter, my sympathies are with you. The moving feast of the rules with FAQs being regularly changed means that complying with the rules has become harder. Looking at the changes over time it seems that we are being dissuaded from asking questions because the answer has been to ban the practice being asked about.

If you have received a letter, please post here and we will do our best to help (well I will at least). If this forum goes down like last time, try looking for other actuarial forums such as Goactuary, ActuarialOutpost, etc. I know it was upsetting for those accused last time when this site went down and they were cut off from support.

 

I'm really sorry this has happened to you and I wish you luck in trying to resolve the issue.

I'm not 100% sure about this but from memory, the bit about needing to reference the notes was added on 7th September (I can't be sure that thats the bit that was added on that day but I think it was) yet the top of the FAQ says "last updated 3rd September". I emailed someone at the institute to try and get them to update the top line but last time I checked (the day before my exam) they had ignored me. I was shocked when I saw the top line was wrong and it was a crucial update as well.

 

I'm so sorry this happened to you. This thread has several posts about what people did in April and should be helpful. I hope all goes well.

 

To add on this Reddit r/ActuaryUK exists too as well as the general r/actuary subreddit (although mainly Americans on this) and you can ask on there. There’s links to a UK discord on the UK sub too.

 

N15, really sorry to hear about this. Altering an FAQ a few weeks before the exams (when we're going to be busy studying) to get us to add in our references is simply not acceptable. It could take someone a month of Sundays to do that. I have a set of notes in a large A4 pad for ST1 that I've built up over the years, from Acted chapter summaries, flash cards, personal observations, Acted tutorial questions etc. It's not feasible to add references to all of them in a short time frame. In a written exam I'd have certainly been reproducing bookwork defintions from these notes (from memory), but there'd have been no question of plagiarism due to the presence of invigilators.

I've had two counselling reports for ST1 (which continues to be my Kryptonite) over the years (before the IFoA unilaterally decided to remove this as an option for all later exams and only leave it available to you for your last exam, but that's for another day) and in the (very similar) closing paragraphs of both I am told to study the Examiners' Reports (for the exam relating to the counselling report), presumably encouraging me to add such material into my exam preparation material. When doing same over the years, we would never have had to think about "what if I were to have access to this material during the exam?" so putting it into our own words would simply not have occurred to us and it would pretty much have been transcribed more or less verbatim.

So, are we now to redo our exam material all in our own words before signing up for another exam?

I am not a lawyer but it would seem to me that the burden on proof is for them to prove you did something, rather than you to prove you didn't do something. You said your notes do incorporate some other sources (as do mine and many others' I'm sure - I think it's perfectly reasonable to do so, especially when preparing for the old style written exams when you wouldn't have had access to them) and for them to throw this in your face as prima facie evidence of plagiarism is galling.

If anyone here sucessfully managed to refute allegations against them from the April sitting, I'm sure it would be very useful to put a high level outline of how they did so here.

Edit : Milly, thanks for the Reddit pointers, it has opened my eyes!

 

It really should be that the rules are final at the point when exams registration opens. Can't imagine many other organisations where you would sign up to something where they can go and change the rules and not even personally inform you.

 

Did everyone just get this

“ An Apology

Dear (name)

Last week, as a student member who sat our examinations in September 2020, you received a note from us related to plagiarism and collusion. The note did not communicate our intended message appropriately, nor did it meet the standards we strive to hold ourselves to in communicating with our members. I am sorry for this misunderstanding and apologise for any confusion or concern that this may have caused. Please be reassured that we will improve future communications with student members to ensure that both the message and tone are clear and appropriate.

As context, following our first online ‘open book’ examinations in April 2020, our employer contacts requested an update on processes for the September session, including indicative timing for individuals receiving letters outlining ‘causes for concern’ related to examination scripts. These employers had the best interests of their student employees in mind when they made this request, wishing to be prepared to support individuals who might receive such letters from the IFoA.

A note was sent to all employer contacts last week – containing no personal information related to individual candidates – and, as a matter of courtesy, we wanted you to have the same information. However, we quickly realised that the note you all received could be interpreted as the IFoA initiating an investigation process against those receiving it for plagiarism and/or collusion.

This was not our intention and I am genuinely sorry for any anxiety that our communication may have caused. Concerns related to plagiarism and collusion arise in an extremely small proportion of each session’s examination scripts, and we regret that many recipients of last week’s note were left thinking that their examination scripts were ‘causing the IFoA concern’.

For further reassurance, unless we have already contacted you individually, we have no issues about possible plagiarism during your September examinations. However, as last week’s note indicated, we are yet to contact candidates where we continue to have concerns about possible collusion. We expect a relatively small number of candidates to begin receiving such letters this week, with all remaining letters received by the middle of next week.

I would also like to thank those who, having received the note, posted on social media to make clear that it was a general communication to all candidates, rather than an allegation of inappropriate conduct against the recipients. You helped immeasurably to relieve the initial concern of those receiving the message.
Once again, we look forward to continuously improving our future service to you. Thank you for your feedback, understanding on this matter, and continued support of the IFoA.

Yours sincerely,

Clifford Friend
Director of Engagement and Learning”​

 

Yes, I just did. At least IFoA bothered to apologise.

 

I agree. The worst bit is that the exam rules on their page kept changing but they were not changing the date it was updated on. I sat CM1 and was shocked to see that copy and paste from Excel was not allowed as stated in the exam instructions. However, a few dayd before the exam I am sure I saw the rules alluding to the fact that it was okay to copy and paste. In fact I even saw a thread on this very forum where an Acted tutor also seems to think that they meant we could copy and paste. This is ridiculous and I feel like they continue to do as they please without any concern for students.

 

I got it also. I'm happy they decided to apologize but the fact that they wrote it in the first place is disappointing. You would think that they were never students!

 

Nice email. Good to see they're trying to communicate more anyway.

@N15 commiserations. One thing I will say is that it seems the majority of posters on this form were "cleared" the last time and some did go on to pass. If anyone who successfully appealed could give an overview of the process that would be much appreciated.

 

That's because they never were! Virtually no one that deals with you on IFoA payroll is an actuary except maybe a handful of education actuaries who you never get to deal with.

 

In the next exam, I will have a camera recording myself during the exam. Save the video until result day. That should solve the problem.
Maybe something IFoA can do is monitoring the screen during exam.

 

I like this idea. I would like to do the same too to avoid any of these issues. There are no clear rules on what they expect and also the entire process gives one so much anxiety.

 

I actually tried to do this this time, but my phone didn’t have enough memory so the video cut off so I gave up after that