Academic Integrity

All students at Confederation College must follow the College’s Academic Integrity Policy. It is every student’s responsibility to familiarize themselves with this policy; ignorance of the policy is not an acceptable reason for violating the policy.

Completing work on your own and with integrity enables you to practice skills like time management and critical thinking. These skills are important for success throughout college and beyond. Academic dishonesty is a violation of academic integrity. Academic dishonesty takes the form of any kind of cheating in academic work, including taking credit for the work of others without crediting them, misrepresenting one’s own work, fabricating information, and facilitating academic dishonesty in others.

Examples of academic dishonesty include, but are not limited to, the following four major offences:

1. Plagiarism

Plagiarism is taking the words or ideas of someone else and presenting them as your own. This can include include copying and pasting from the internet without putting the copied information into quotation marks, as well as not including citations for quotations, paraphrases, or summaries.

You must use APA citations and references to provide “attribution”. In other words, whenever you use information, ideas, or direct quotations from a source, you must give credit to that source by including an APA in-text citation next to the borrowed information and including a full bibliographic entry for the source in a reference list.

Paraphrasing means rephrasing ideas or information from a source. When you paraphrase, you must make sure that you are accurately representing the original material and that you have rephrased it sufficiently so that your phrasing is quite different from the original. When you paraphrase ideas or information, you must include a citation and reference.

Direct quoting means using the exact words or phrasing from the source. If you want to use direct quoting, you must put the directly quoted material into quotation marks to show that the phrasing is not your own. You must also include a citation and reference.

Patchwriting occurs when students try to create a paraphrase, but they do not change the words or phrasing enough. Patchwriting is NOT acceptable in college courses. You must either paraphrase OR direct quote.

To learn more about plagiarism, take this plagiarism tutorial from Indiana University.

2. Cheating

Cheating is using or attempting to use unauthorized information or materials in any academic exercise; copying from someone else’s work; representing someone else’s work as one’s own; or violating rules and policies governing examinations, such as bringing pre-written work into an in-class examination or talking during examination or accessing information via the internet.

Cheating may also include using AI (artificial intelligence).  AI programs include ChatGPT, Bing, Grammarly, and Quillbot. In CS 106, you are not allowed to use any AI software, and any unauthorized use of these tools will be considered an act of academic dishonesty. However, you may use Microsoft Word tools (including spell-check, grammar-check, and editor functions).  In other classes, if AI use is allowed, be sure to ask your teacher how to cite your use of the software.

3. Fabrication

Fabrication is inventing or falsifying data, citations, or information.

Examples of fabrication include making up information or data to include in a research paper or lab report, or creating a false citation for information in order to avoid charges of plagiarism. When you include paraphrases or direct quotes, it is important that your citations and references are accurate or you may be accused of fabricating your attributions.

4. Facilitating Academic Dishonesty

Facilitating academic dishonesty is intentionally helping or trying to help someone else commit an act of academic dishonesty.

This violation is also sometimes called “collusion.” Examples of collusion include sharing quiz questions and/or answers with classmates, showing completed work to classmates so they can copy it, or providing homework answers to classmates.

Professors assign quizzes and assignments to assess your learning. Unless your teacher specifically says that you are allowed to work in groups or with other students, you should assume that any graded assignment must be completed individually. Do not share your work with other students.

Policy Violations

Canadian post-secondary institutions take academic integrity very seriously. Employers rely on colleges and universities to uphold academic integrity policies so they can be assured that graduates have sufficient skills and knowledge to be successful in their professional fields.

Therefore, students who violate the academic integrity policy can face serious consequences. At Confederation College, first time offenders will receive a 0 or severely reduced score on the assignment, and the teacher will enter a report about the incident into the Academic Integrity Tracking System. Subsequent offences will receive additional and potentially more severe consequences, which may include a mandatory meeting with the Dean or Associate Dean, an F grade in the course, or in severe cases, expulsion from their program.

Academic Values

As a post-secondary student in Canada, you are part of an academic community that is governed by a set of six shared values. These values ensure that the degree or diploma that you earn is a true representation of your hard work and dedication to your studies.

1. Honesty

Honest students respect university policies, follow the instructions of their professors and do their work on their own, without any unauthorized help. Dishonest behaviour, such as lying, cheating, fraud, theft, impersonating another person, falsification of data and the like, are morally and ethically not acceptable to a person of integrity.

2. Trust

If you are always honest, you will be able to build a relationship of trust both with your peers and with your instructors. Trust is established over time and is based mostly on your actions.

3. Fairness

A person of integrity is fair. You are fair to your peers when you do your own work, to authors when you acknowledge their work you use by citing it, to the university when you respect and follow academic integrity standards, and to alumni when your behaviour helps to support the value of their degree.

4. Respect

You show respect when you adhere to your assignment instructions, when you actively participate in learning and show interest in gaining new knowledge, when you contribute your thoughts to the academic discourse while accepting that others may disagree with you, when you credit others for their ideas, and when you show that you are putting your best efforts forward.

5. Responsibility

You show responsible behaviour when you lead by example, when you resist negative peer pressure, and when you discourage others from violating academic integrity principles. Being responsible means being accountable to yourself and others and to do your work to the best of your abilities.

6. Courage

To uphold academic integrity standards requires courage to resist temptations for the “easy way out” and to speak up against wrongdoing.