Student Conduct, Participation and Communications Policy

Students when interacting with College staff and other students should:

• Act and communicate in a professional and business like manner
• Be co-operative and considerate to others
• Refrain from swearing and using aggressive language or conduct
• Raise any concerns in an appropriate manner using the approved procedures for raising concerns and complaints
• Ensure their behaviour does not negatively impact the study experience of other students.

 Of course, our staff are required to meet this Code of Conduct too!

Students enrolling agree to:

• Make every possible effort to meet course module due dates.
• Make regular progress and complete the qualification within the course time frame and to the Student Participation Standards.
• Participate in any workplace training provided by your employer or the College.
• Attend any training or progress meetings with the College.
• Notify your employer and the College if you are having any difficulties completing the tasks or workbooks.
• Notify the College if you leave your employer during the term of a traineeship.

Students To Submit Their Own Original Work

All work must be your own work.

This means you are agreeing that you have not:

• Copied (in whole or in part) material or responses from another student
• Used any Artificial Intelligence (AI) software to generate an answer that does not come solely from your own knowledge or skills
• Used a paid assessment writing service
• Allowed someone else to complete your assessment activities.

Please be aware we also have a range of checks to ensure you are the one doing your assessments.

Our systems and procedures will allow us to:

• Compare the style of answers and writing you use 
• Identify the location and device you are working from
• Use technology to identify copying and AI use

For Skills Checks you will be asked to identify yourself before the activity. Keep your photo ID handy in case we ask you to show it to us in video conference assessments.

In all Colleges and Universities, submitting work that is not yours is regarded as a serious offence that can result in your disqualification from completing the course.

As a minimum you and any others involved will be required to re-do a new assessment task.

Where enrolled through your employer, your employer will also be notified of the breach verbally and by a formal letter.

If you work with others in study groups, ensure that your submissions are your own work, reflect your own opinions and are written in your own words.

Copy and Paste from the Internet or Workbook

Answers obtained directly from the internet or study workbooks (unless this is specifically required in the assessment activity) will be failed and are a breach of Academic Conduct. 

Quiz Completion

Quiz completion by guessing randomly is a breach of academic policy. The quiz will be locked after 2 attempts and where the fail result is in the view of the College due to random guesses, an alternative assessment activity will be allocated.

Quality Assurance Policy

ASQA Standards for RTOs (2015), as well as various State-level compliance factors, require all RTOs to adhere to the Rules of Evidence.

Specific information on these Rules can be found here:

https://www.asqa.gov.au/course-accreditation/users-guide-standards-vet-accredited-courses/accredited-courses-guide-appendices/appendix-7-rules-evidence

Essentially, the Rules of Evidence requires RTOs to ensure for elements:

Validity

The assessor must be assured that the student has the skills, knowledge, and attributes as described in the unit of competency and associated assessment requirement.

Sufficiency

The assessment must be assured that the quality, quantity, and relevance of the assessment evidence enable a judgement to be made of a student’s competency.

Authenticity

The assessor must be assured that the evidence presented for assessment is the student’s own work.

Currency

The assessor must be assured that the assessment evidence demonstrates current competency.  This requires the assessment evidence to be from the present or the very recent past.

Implementing the ACCM QA Program

As part of ACCM’s ongoing quality assurance program aligned with the Rules of Evidence, a learner’s recent submission(s) may be reviewed by another assessor or selected for further assessment.

The purpose of a further assessment review is to ensure completion of our assessment materials has achieved the required level of demonstrable competence in the unit/s undertaken.

This QA verification will be achieved through a 20-30 minute Competency Conversation, where one of our assessors will conduct a verbal discussion with the learner regarding key points, questions or elements of their assessment submission. 

The assessor will verify that the learner is not logged onto their Webclass account for the duration of the conversation, to ensure the depth of the learner’s competency.

Topics will be drawn from the assessment questions previously completed by the learner, relating to the Units of Competency addressed in the selected Subject.

The results of this Competency Conversation will provide ACCM with additional validity, authenticity, sufficiency and currency of the learner’s skills and knowledge.

Competency Conversation results may also identify areas where additional learning and/or further assessment is required.  At that point, the learner will be given the opportunity to conduct further learning opportunities and re-attempt identified assessment activities.

If the College has any concerns about the behaviour of a student, including any breach of College Policies, or behaviour that is regarded as not meeting the Code of Conduct, the College will fully and fairly investigate the issue.

The student/s involved will be given full details of the Colleges concerns and the opportunity to address and explain the issue prior to any decision about disciplinary action being taken.

The College will then communicate to the student/s the outcome and consequences of its investigations.

Where disciplinary action is warranted the College may take action up to and including withdrawing students from their course, without refund or a result being issued. The disciplinary action will reflect the seriousness of the misconduct taken by the student.

Appeals are allowed where the student disputes the disciplinary action.

a) ACCM College is from time to time required to issue formal notices to students. All official contact and notices with students will be sent by email or be issued via Webclass.

Any required attachments will be in word or pdf format.

b) The date of notice will be deemed as 2 working days after sending or publishing on Webclass.

c) If ACCM College receives a bounce back message suggesting that the email was not received, or that Webclass has not been accessed, it may at its discretion send the notice by post, but is not obliged to do so.

The notice date will be legally deemed to be the original notice date of the notice issued under Webclass or email.

It is the students obligation to:

a) Provide an email address and phone number at enrolment 

b) Advise ACCM College of any email address or phone number changes 

c) Have a software program capable of accessing word or pdf attachments 

d) Check their email regularly and accept ACCM College phone calls 

e) Regularly login to Webclass

f) Generally facilitate communication methods to allow interaction with ACCM College and receipt of notices.

a) Students can contact their Student Adviser for assistance with course content and administrative matters. Contact can be by phone or email, using the contact details as published on the ACCM College website.

b) All reasonable efforts will be made to assist students seeking assistance and support, including by arrangement allocating times after normal business hours (9am - 5pm EST).

c) Assistance will be provided immediately, or where all qualified Student Advisers are unavailable, no later than 24 hours after the request.

d) The main contact methods will be phone and email. Students who email may be asked to contact us by phone to improve communication about a specific issue.

When emailing asking about tasks:

• Clearly indicate what subject and what question number you are asking about
• Include both your first name and last name
• Ensure your email explains any attachments e.g. that they are questions you would like reviewed or help with or to be formally marked

 When calling in to talk to your ACCM College Student Adviser:

• Introduce yourself with your first and last name
• Briefly explain what you would like help with so that they can identify if they can help you or if someone else would be better to assist you

 Ensure that your communication is courteous and business like.

a) All students will be contacted by phone in each week of the first 4-6 weeks - which is the onboarding period.

b) In some situations where we are not able to talk to you - we will send an email instead.

c) If a student is progressing satisfactorily they should, after that initial onboarding period, expect a phone contact once a month.

d)If they do not answer our calls - we will instead send an email, but will generally not keep calling unless it is urgent we speak to them.

e) Students may, of course, contact us at any time for help and do not need to wait for us to call them.

f) If a student is a little behind we will be in contact normally once every 2 weeks until good progress is re-established.

g) If a student is well behind, or at risk of not finishing their course on time, it becomes necessary for us to contact them (and their employer if in a Traineeship or employer sponsored course) on a weekly basis with the view to agreeing on a strategy to ensure the course is progressed and they will complete on time.

h) In addition to phone calls and email, SMS will also be used where it is important that we make contact and we are not seeing a response to other methods.

It is not possible for students to opt out of receiving contact.