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CUC PRQ Reference Booklet

Introduction
The CUC PRQ Reference Booklet provides and explains important academic and administrative
guidelines and requirements on course and assignment matters that are essential for all courses
in the SUSS Core.

Please refer to this reference booklet (in addition to the SUSS Student Handbook) in order to
complete the compulsory Prerequisite Quiz (PRQ01) on Canvas.

Copyright
Course materials including lectures, course notes, PowerPoint or other digital or online
presentations and recordings, iStudy Guides, and assignment instructions and assignment
booklets, including quizzes, are protected under copyright laws. This means that you are
prohibited from sharing these materials on websites, on other public domains or platforms, or
with individuals outside the course. If you use, distribute, upload, post, or reproduce course
materials without written authorization, you shall be subject to disciplinary and/or legal action.

Ghostwriting
Ghostwriting entails engaging a third-party service or any entity other than the individual taking
the course to write or extensively edit an assignment. Students who engage ghostwriting
agencies or another entity to generate work to be submitted to a course are breaking the
university’s rules on academic integrity. Students are expected to complete their own original
assignments. A student who uses a ghostwriter to write or rewrite their assignment will fail the
assignment and possibly the course. If this is a repeat offence, the student risks being expelled.

Penalties for ghostwriting can also be applied after the term has been completed. Since
ghostwriting services reuse assignments – even if they promise original content – students can
be flagged for ghostwriting after the assignment has been submitted and marked.

Group Work
When working on a group-based assignment, students work in a team to discuss and exchange
ideas as a part of the peer-learning process. These exchanges are meant to ensure that students
acquire communication skills identified by SkillsFuture as essential for employability, and which
are captured in the University’s enhanced transcript when students take any SUSS Core course.
Thus, each group member should be responsive to and responsible for the group’s needs, and
contribute sufficiently to the group-based assignments in order to be qualified as part of the
group.

Please familiarise yourself with the information provided and follow the guidelines below when
completing your assignments.

1. What qualifies as sufficient contribution to the group-based assignments should be decided

by everyone in the group at the first meeting. This discussion should, minimally, cover aspects
of the assignment like deadlines and timelines for the completion of tasks, submission of work,
etc., assigned workload and tasks for each member, and the expectations everyone has of
members in the group, for example, that members should be responsive, should be present

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for meetings, etc. This should be stated clearly in written form and amended and/or added
to whenever necessary.
2. There should be a clear demarcation of tasks that indicates which group member is
responsible for which assignment requirement(s), and at which stage of the submission
process. This will help avoid any potential confusion and/or misunderstanding among group
members.
3. In the event that one or more members of the group are non-contributing or non-contactable,
report this to the lecturer early. The group must present evidence that shows beyond a
reasonable doubt that the group member in question did not contribute or was not
contactable. This includes the history of WhatsApp conversations, Google docs, emails, etc.
All members are expected to do their part to avoid such an unpleasant event. Effective group
management and dynamics are important aspects of group work.
4. Any offending member/s of a group can only be penalised by the lecturer. Students should
NOT take matters into their own hands and decide on ‘penalties’ without the knowledge of
the lecturer. These include barring or restricting certain group members’ access to shared
documents, or leaving certain group members’ names out of submissions. This list of
inappropriate behaviours is non-exhaustive.
5. Group members who are deemed by the lecturer to have failed to contribute at all, or
adequately, will be awarded a zero score or a lower score separate from the group after
investigation. This applies to all assignments that have a group component, for example,
Discussion Board assignments.

Group Work – Bullying

Bullying can take the form of group members constantly dismissing or disregarding a
particular member’s contributions without good reason. It can also take the form of group
members taking justice into their own hands by excluding a group member, perceived to be
free-riding, from discussions and work pertaining to the assignment. Consequently, the group
omits mention of the individual’s name in submitting the assignment.
If you think that you are a victim of group bullying in either of the two scenarios set out above
or in any other form, please report to your instructor as soon as you have obtained enough
evidence that you can share with your instructor. Please note that, upon receiving your
evidence, your instructor is likely to call for a meeting of all group members to give everyone
a fair hearing.

Plagiarism
Plagiarism will not be tolerated in any form. SUSS has strict policies concerning plagiarism, and
penalties will be imposed on students who plagiarise.

Plagiarism refers to using someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as your own whether
on purpose or by accident. It is your responsibility to make sure you are responsible with your
research and cite other people’s work and ideas.

Any chunk of unquoted text which is sufficiently similar to some other text will be investigated
for plagiarism. This will be the case even if the overall similarity index of the essay is low. Copying
ideas, and not just sentences or phrases, without citing them is also considered plagiarism. If you
use another source’s ideas, reasoning, or argument, you must provide citations.

Please familiarise yourself with the information provided and follow the guidelines below when
completing your assignments.

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1. An in-text citation is the abbreviated source information given in brackets within the
content body of your work. The reference is the full source information provided in the
references/ works cited list at the end of your work. Both must be provided within an
assignment when any external source is used.
2. Use a consistent citation style throughout the assignment.
3. In-text citations and references should be provided in all submissions for a course regardless
of the medium or form. A presentation done in PowerPoint, or presented as an academic
poster or infographic would need citations, just as a written essay would.
4. If you use a source multiple times within your work, you should cite the source every time
you use it, and NOT only for the first appearance.
5. All content from external sources used in your work must be cited. These include text,
pictures, diagrams, statistics, graphs, etc.
6. If you use the exact words of any part of an external source, you will need to use quotation
marks and provide an in-text citation (page number must be included if it is available), and a
reference.
7. If you paraphrase someone else’s ideas but do not copy exact words or phrases, you should
provide an in-text citation, and a reference.
8. You SHOULD NOT write anything similar, use the same sentences, or organise your content
or arguments, etc., in a similar manner to other students as these are also examples of
plagiarism.
9. Do not self-plagiarise. Do NOT submit, either in whole or in part, anything you have
previously submitted whether for this module or any other module.
10. Students should not collaborate on individual assignments. Turning in work that is similar to
another submission will be penalised for plagiarism.
11. Citations ought to be included for any information that is not considered common knowledge,
or is new to you.
12. Information or facts that are common knowledge, for example, that the sun rises from the
east, do not usually need to be cited. However, if you include other information and details
in your explanation or description that is new to you and go beyond what is common
knowledge, you should provide the source for the details.
13. Citations should be provided when you are repeating something told to you verbally.
14. Merely substituting one word for another in a phrase or sentence does not count as a
paraphrase. For instance, changing ‘the moral thing to do is X’ to ‘the ethical thing to do is X’
is not considered an adequate paraphrase. Sentences with only substituted synonyms will
have the same structure and hence will count as sufficiently similar on Turnitin.
15. Determining if plagiarism has taken place is NOT dependent on any Turnitin similarity index
or threshold. An essay can be flagged for plagiarism even if the similarity index is low.
16. Replicating or following the structure, argument and/or reasoning of another source is
plagiarism. This is the case even if the topic of the work may be dissimilar.
17. Your work should not be comprised of quotations or paraphrased sections that have been
put together. Although it is not technically plagiarism to have large sections of quotations
when those quotations are properly cited, you will not attain a good grade as every
assignment should reflect your independent work and thinking. Marks cannot be awarded for
work that is not your own. External sources should be used to support your independent and
original argument, and not be used in place of it.

Some Examples:

1. Direct quoting of external source with quotation marks and in-text citation:
“Side constraints express the inviolability of other persons” (Nozick 1974, p. 32).

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2. Paraphrasing external source with in-text citation:

Mixed-race individuals inhabit a unique space in culture and society (Harris 2019).

3. Using common knowledge (no citations needed):

Singapore has many HDB flats.

4. Using common knowledge with additional details:

Singapore has many HDB flats. The oldest HDB flats are Blocks 45, 48, and 49 in the
Queenstown estate (Yeo 2016).

Please refer to the following links for support in your research and writing (including resources
for citations and plagiarism) for SUSS Core courses:

Research on humanities and social sciences - https://scope.suss.edu.sg/

Academic writing - https://scope.suss.edu.sg/index.php/category/academic-writing/

For more information on SUSS guidelines and regulations for plagiarism, please refer to paragraph
2.2.1(b) of Section 5.1 Rights and Responsibilities, subsection on Student Disciplinary Regulations
and paragraph 1.4 of Section 5.2 Academic Matters, subsection on Assessment and Examination
Regulations in the Student Handbook.

Security
There were some security breaches for Zoom lessons in previous semesters so it is essential we
adhere to the procedures listed below to ensure the security of our classes. These procedures
may cause some inconveniences, but do comply with the following so that we can ensure that
all our Zoom classes are safe for all students and lecturers.

1. Update the version of your Zoom app regularly.

2. DO NOT share the Zoom meeting link and password with anyone. Sharing Zoom links for
class with people who are not enrolled in the course constitutes a security breach.
3. There will be regular checks on the participant list during the Zoom lesson to ensure that
only enrolled students are in the Zoom classroom. Any participants who are not in the class
enrolment list will be reported and removed from the class immediately.
4. All classes will administer a waiting room. Only enrolled students are allowed to enter the
main Zoom classroom. You will need to:
• Sign in 15 minutes earlier to allow your lecturer to verify your name against the enrolled
student list. You may need to wait longer if you sign in at the exact time or after the
lesson has started since your lecturer will already be conducting the lesson.
• Use the exact name as per SUSS records on Canvas T-page. Your lecturer will only admit
you based on this list, and will decline entry to those whose names do not appear as per
SUSS records. If you need to verify or change your display name, please log in to your
Zoom account to do so.

Submissions and Deadlines

Students should adhere strictly to course and assignment deadlines as there is strictly no
extension of assignment deadlines. Any late submissions after the deadline will automatically
incur a late penalty.

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SUSS policy lists the following circumstances for consideration of a waiver of the late penalty (See
Paragraph 1.8.3 in section 5.2 Academic Matters, subsection on Assessment and Examinations
Regulations of the student handbook):
1. Hospitalisation due to major illness of the student;
2. Death of student’s immediate family members (i.e., Spouse/ siblings/ children/
parent/ parent-in-law/ grandparent/ grandparent-in-law);
3. Care to student’s children due to hospitalisation;
4. Pregnancy related medical conditions.
Even if the above circumstances exist, the exemption does not apply automatically. You will have
to appeal against the mark deduction by submitting an online Application for Mark Deduction
Appeal via e-services on the Student Portal. In addition, you will have to pay an administrative fee
of $64.20 which will not be refunded regardless of the outcome of the appeal. There are no other
circumstances aside from the above for consideration of a waiver of the late penalty.

Please familiarise yourself with the information provided and follow the guidelines below when
completing your assignments.

1. All assignments are available on Canvas once you are enrolled into the course. You are
advised to start working on them early to meet the deadlines.
2. All assignments are submitted to Turnitin for plagiarism checks. We advise students to submit
their assignments well in advance of the deadline (e.g., 1 week before) so that they can see
their Turnitin score and make corrections where necessary to help them to avoid committing
plagiarism.
3. You need to achieve a total of 40% across all your assignments to pass a SUSS Core course.
4. There is a 12-hour grace period for technical support in case you experience technical glitches
before or at the time of the deadline. If you experience any technical glitches before or at
the time of the deadline, it will not be treated as a late submission if an official IT case has
been filed with the IT support department. You are advised to keep the receipt of the case
number and clear evidence of the technical glitch in the event that you need to submit a
waiver for late penalty. You are also advised to take screenshots of the problem for
verification.
5. Given that the 12-hour grace period is meant for IT to address technical issues experienced
before or at the time of the deadline, any submission after the deadline (even when it falls
within the 12-hour grace period) is considered a late submission. Thus, if you encounter
technical difficulties in submitting your assignment during the 12-hour grace period, it will be
counted as a late submission.
6. In the absence of any technical reports, 10 marks will be automatically deducted via the
grade-book system for each 24-hour block after the assignment submission deadline.
Assignments that have more than 50 marks deducted will be assigned a zero mark.

Withdrawal
Students who do not complete any course PCOQ by the stipulated deadline will not be allowed
to start the course. These students will hence be automatically withdrawn from the course.
Students who wish to withdraw from any SUSS Core course after the completion of the PCOQ
and/or after the submission of at least one assignment should approach Student Support for
advice regarding the withdrawal process and conditions for withdrawal.

Students who withdraw from a course will be awarded a “Withdrawn” grade (“Repeat” status),
which does not affect the overall CGPA but will be reflected on the transcript.

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