I appreciate the confusion that now exists for many of you. The following represents my personal view and interpretation of the guidance issued.
I think it might be worth back pedalling a little and looking again at the guidance that was published in February in the Exam Handbook:
You are strictly prohibited from copying and pasting, or re-typing content, word for word, from any source or multiple sources. To do so could amount to plagiarism. Such material may be used for reference purposes only. You should not copy verbatim from any materials but should use your own words.
How do I prepare for open book exams?
We recognise that answers to some questions in our examinations, such as asking for ‘definitions’ or ‘listing principles’, may have been memorised as part of your revision strategy. These could be identical or very similar to the contents of your learning materials. Examiners and markers will be familiar with these questions, and candidates will not generally be investigated for plagiarism where such similarity is identified. However, if you use direct quotations from your learning materials to answer other questions, you should acknowledge this with a page or line number in the body of your answer, plus author's name and year of publication. If you are referencing external material then you should remember this should form only a very small fraction of your overall script and it needs to be relevant to the question. Large volumes of reference material will not be seen as your own response to the questions and could also be flagged as plagiarism. Our recommendation is that you answer everything in your own words.
Ref: https://www.actuaries.org.uk/system/files/field/document/Exams Handbook April 2021 v3.pdf page 12
So first and foremost, our advice is to write all of your answers in your own words, using the knowledge you have built up during your studies. If there are (hopefully infrequent) situations where you feel that this is not possible, then follow the more detailed guidance at
https://www.actuaries.org.uk/studyi...-regulations/inappropriate-conduct/plagiarism and reference anything you repeat word-for-word or paraphrase.
If you happen to miss referencing the odd short definition then I don't think you should worry given the words in the handbook.
I appreciate that some of the new guidance appears to contradict some of the guidance in the handbook - we will raise this with the IFoA when their office reopens on Tuesday.
In the mean time I would continue your studies as normal - keep practising questions, improving your knowledge and application skills as it will definitely improve your chances of success on the day.
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