Undergraduate Policies and Statements
This page outlines academic policies and statements for all undergraduate courses offered by the Department of History. All undergraduate course outlines should refer to this page.
If you have any concerns or questions not answered by this page, please contact Undergraduate Program Coordinator Rebecca Northcott at rnorthc2@uwo.ca or Undergraduate Chair Robert MacDougall at rmacdou@uwo.ca.
Accessibility Options
If you require material in an alternate format, or if you require any other arrangements to make this course more accessible to you, please contact your course instructor. You may also wish to contact Western’s Accessible Education office, part of Academic Support & Engagement, for any specific question regarding accessibility.
Information regarding accommodation of exams is available on the Registrar’s website.
Copyright
Students may not record or distribute any class activity, including conversations during office hours, without written permission from the instructor, except as necessary as part of approved accommodations for students with disabilities. Any approved recordings may only be used for the student’s own private use.
Course Selection
Students are responsible for ensuring that their selection of courses is appropriate and accurately recorded, that all course prerequisites have been successfully completed, and that they are aware of any antirequisite courses they may have taken.
If a student enrols in a course for which they do not have the prerequisites, they may be removed from the course and have it deleted from their record. This decision may not be appealed. A student will receive no adjustment to his or her fees in the event that he or she is dropped from a course for failing to have the necessary prerequisites.
If a student takes a course that is antirequisite to a course previously taken, they may lose credit for the earlier course, regardless of the grade achieved in the most recent course.
Health and Wellness
Students who are in emotional or mental distress should refer to Mental Health Support at Western’s Health & Wellness Services for a complete list of options about how to obtain help.
Medical Issues
The University recognizes that a student’s ability to meet their academic responsibilities may, on occasion, be impaired by medical illness. Please go to: https://www.uwo.ca/univsec/pdf/academic_policies/appeals/academic_consideration.pdf
to read about the University’s policy on medical accommodation. In the event of illness, you should contact Academic Counselling as soon as possible. The Academic Counsellors will determine, in consultation with the student, whether or not accommodation should be requested. They will subsequently contact the instructors in the relevant courses about the accommodation. Once the instructor has made a decision about whether to grant an accommodation, the student should contact his/her instructors to determine a new due date for tests, assignments, and exams.
Students must see the Academic Counsellor and submit all required documentation in order to be approved for certain accommodation.
Missed Tests, Midterms, and Exams
Students with an approved absence from an in-class test will be required to write a make-up test. The make-up test will not necessarily be in the same format, be of the same duration, or cover the same material as the original test. Course professors may not be available to respond to questions during the make-up test/exam slots.
All make-ups for in-person tests/midterms/exams will take place in-person. Students will not be permitted to write an online make-up for an in-person test/midterm/exam. Online courses will have online make-up tests/midterms/exams.
For in-person classes, make-up tests will be written at one of the Department of History make-up midterms. There will be one make-up date in the Fall term, and one make-up date in the Winter term. Dates for the make-ups will be listed on the Department of History website under Important Dates.
Students with an approved absence from an in-person exam in December will be required to write a make-up exam. The December make-up exams will be scheduled in January.
Students with an approved absence from an in-person exam in April will be required to write a make-up exam. The April make-up exams will be scheduled in the first two weeks of May.
Students who fail to write a make-up test or exam in a designated Department time slot will receive a grade of zero on that assessment.
No other make-up opportunities will be provided unless further academic consideration is granted by Academic Counselling.
Scholastic Offences
Scholastic offences will be taken seriously. Students are directed to read the appropriate policy, specifically, the definition of what constitutes a scholastic offence, at the following website: www.uwo.ca/univsec/pdf/academic_policies/appeals/scholastic_discipline_undergrad.pdf
All required papers may be subject to submission for textual similarity review to the commercial plagiarism detection software under license to the University for the detection of plagiarism. All papers submitted for such checking will be included as source documents in the reference database for the purpose of detecting plagiarism of papers subsequently submitted to the system. Use of the service is subject to the licensing agreement, currently between The University of Western Ontario and Turnitin.com (http://www.turnitin.com).
Computer-marked multiple-choice tests and/or exams may be subject to submission for similarity review by software that will check for unusual coincidences in answer patterns that may indicate cheating.
Plagiarism
Students must write their essays and assignments in their own words. Whenever students take an idea, or a passage from another author, they must acknowledge their debt both by using quotation marks where appropriate and by proper referencing such as footnotes or citations. Plagiarism is a major academic offense (see Scholastic Offence Policy in the Western Academic Calendar).
All required papers may be subject to submission for textual similarity review to the commercial plagiarism detection software under license to the University for the detection of plagiarism. All papers submitted will be included as source documents in the reference database for the purpose of detecting plagiarism of papers subsequently submitted to the system. Use of the service is subject to the licensing agreement, currently between The University of Western Ontario and Turnitin.com (http://www.turnitin.com).
Students are expected to retain all research notes, rough drafts, essay outlines, and other materials used in preparing assignments. In the unlikely event of concerns being raised about the authenticity of any assignment, your instructor may ask you to produce these materials; an inability to do so may weigh heavily against you.
The following rules pertain to the acknowledgements necessary in academic papers.
A. In using another writer's words, you must both place the words in quotation marks and acknowledge that the words are those of another writer.
You are plagiarizing if you use a sequence of words, a sentence or a paragraph taken from other writers without acknowledging them to be theirs. Acknowledgement is indicated either by (1) mentioning the author and work from which the words are borrowed in the text of your paper; or by (2) placing a footnote number at the end of the quotation in your text, and including a correspondingly numbered footnote at the bottom of the page (or in a separate reference section at the end of your essay). This footnote should indicate author, title of the work, place and date of publication and page number. Method (2) given above is usually preferable for academic essays because it provides the reader with more information about your sources and leaves your text uncluttered with parenthetical and tangential references. In either case words taken from another author must be enclosed in quotation marks or set off from your text by single spacing and indentation in such a way that they cannot be mistaken for your own words. Note that you cannot avoid indicating quotation simply by changing a word or phrase in a sentence or paragraph which is not your own.
B. In adopting other writer's ideas, you must acknowledge that they are another writer’s ideas.
You are plagiarizing if you adopt, summarize, or paraphrase other writers' trains of argument, ideas or sequences of ideas without acknowledging their authorship according to the method of acknowledgement given in “A” above. Since the words are your own, they need not be enclosed in quotation marks. Be certain, however, that the words you use are entirely your own; where you must use words or phrases from your source; these should be enclosed in quotation marks, as in “A” above.
Clearly, it is possible for you to formulate arguments or ideas independently of another writer who has expounded the same ideas, and whom you have not read. Where you got your ideas is the important consideration here. Do not be afraid to present an argument or idea without acknowledgement to another writer, if you have arrived at it entirely independently. Acknowledge it if you have derived it from a source outside your own thinking on the subject.
In short, use of acknowledgements and, when necessary, quotation marks is necessary to distinguish clearly between what is yours and what is not. Since the rules have been explained to you, if you fail to make this distinction, your instructor very likely will do so for you, and they will be forced to regard your omission as intentional literary theft. Plagiarism is a serious offence which may result in a student receiving an 'F' in a course or, in extreme cases, in their suspension from the University.
