What to do if you observe irregularities during an exam.

See: Administering assessments – What to do if you suspect fraud and irregularities

What to do if you suspect plagiarism or misuse of GenAI in an essay

Report your suspicion. Always.

As the examiner, you are obliged to report actual or suspected fraud to the Board of Examiners. You should always do this, even in the case of minor offences: the Board of Examiners also records these offences and will take them into account in its decisions if students break the rules again. 

• Send an email to the Board of Examiners, with the evidence in an attachment. 
• The Board of Examiners needs: 1) screenshots of all passages where you suspect plagiarism or use of AI; 2) the Turnitin plagiarism report; 3) the original submission.
• Inform the student that the case will be submitted to the Board of Examiners and the work will not be graded until the Board of Examiners has taken a decision.
• Give the Board of Examiners some guidance in your email: state whether the submitted assignment meets the requirements and what makes you think it might be AI-generated (fully or partly) or contains plagiarism. 
• Before submitting the case, first verify whether the references actually exist. (Please note: reference may also be made to relevant, existing and well-known authors, although they have not written any publications with that specific title). Indicate in your email whether you have checked the references and whether they are genuine. 
• If you’ve already spoken with the student about the issue, please also provide the Board of Examiners with a short report of this conversation. 

Don’t mark the work or give a grade (yet)

If you suspect fraud, you will only mark and grade a completed exam (or assignment/report) when the Board of Examiners has decided whether or not fraud has occurred and whether or not to impose sanctions. 

Do not impose sanctions yourself

The law stipulates that sanctions (such as declaring the assignment invalid or excluding the student from the exam) may only be imposed by the Board of Examiners. As the examiner, you are therefore not permitted to do this yourself. 

What the Board of Examiners will do

The Board of Examiners will decide whether fraud or plagiarism has been committed, possibly after conducting a further investigation. For this purpose, the Board of Examiners may also interview the student and may perhaps interview you, as the examiner. If the Board of Examiners decides that fraud can be proved ‘beyond reasonable doubt’, it will impose a sanction in proportion to the nature and seriousness of the fraud committed. You will be informed of the decision.

It should be noted, however, that it can often be very difficult to establish (legal) proof of plagiarism, and in particular of fraud committed through unauthorised use of GenAI.

For more information and instructions, please see: 

• Chapter 6 of the Rules and Regulations of the Boards of Examiners 

More information

• Leiden University Code of Conduct on Plagiarism 
• Rules and Regulations of the Boards of Examiners
• GenAI and LLMs in the Academic Community, an informative online module if you’d like to know more about LLMs and GenAI
• AI in education
• ChatGPT: What is possible and what is allowed?