Tips to Avoid Academic Offences – Assignments

• Read your assignment instructions carefully. If something is unclear or if you have any questions, ask your Course Instructor before the assignment is due. Avoid directing your questions and concerns to other students because the information that they provide you with could be inaccurate and out-of-date.
• If other students have questions about an assignment, it’s one thing to answer their questions but it’s best to avoid providing them with your work and answers to assignment questions. Those students should be sending their questions to the Course Instructor.
• Prepare, complete, and submit your own academic work.
• Understand what assignments, or parts of assignments, are to be completed individually and when you’re permitted to collaborate with other students.
• Understand which material, resources, technologies, and tools are permitted for use and when it’s appropriate to use them. Avoid material, resources, technologies, and tools that are not permitted for use. If you have any questions about what is or isn’t permitted for use, ask your Course Instructor.
• Avoid sharing your academic work with other students. Remember to protect your work if you’re sharing computers.
• Avoid accessing and downloading from course content sharing sites like Course Hero and StuDoc U. There is no guarantee that the assignments on these sites were done correctly, followed instructions or achieved decent grades. Students are strongly discouraged from uploading to and downloading from these sites.
• Avoid uploading your work and completed assignments to course content sharing sites like Course Hero and StuDocU so that other students can’t download your work to submit it as their own.
• Avoid opening and responding to emails, messages and ads that offer to complete assignments in exchange for payment.
• Avoid using tools like spin bots and word generators. They may make sentences look different from how they appear in their original sources but rearranging words in sentences and exchanging words in sentences for other words does not constitute you rewriting someone else’s work in your own words. Even if you did rewrite someone else’s work in your own words, you would still need to include a citation at the end of those sentences.
• Keep a list of the sources that you consult and use while working on assignments so that you can remember which sources to cite.
• When you’ve conducted research, always cite the people and their work whenever you’ve incorporated their work into your assignments.
• Remember that proper citing and referencing requires two components: in-text citations and listed references – both components are needed in order to fulfill the citing and referencing requirements.
• Attend the workshops that are delivered through the Library Learning Commons.
• Make an online or in person appointment to get assistance from the staff in the Library Learning Commons.
• Take the APA Citation Resource Course within FanshaweOnline.
• Register for a TurnItIn account within FanshaweOnline so that you can pre-scan your assignments before submitting them. Don’t focus on the percentage but do look at the highlighting because it will let you know where you will need to put in-text citations.
• Keep track of your due dates and plan ahead because this will help you avoid situations where you may feel unprepared and in a situation where you may be more likely to take risks that could lead to Academic Offences. If you think or know that you may need an extension, ask your Course Instructor ahead of time and they will work with you to make the appropriate arrangements.
• If an emergency occurs that prevents you from completing your assignment on time, make sure that you provide your Course Instructor with legitimate documentation so that they can help you to make appropriate arrangements for a deadline extension.
• Always provide legitimate documentation when it’s requested by a Course Instructor or College staff member.
• If you’re using spreadsheets, templated spreadsheets, data sets, statistics, computer programming code, etc. that is not original to you, you should have a conversation with your Course Instructor to make sure that those electronic files or data can be used and that you’ll still be meeting the requirements of the assignment by using them.
• If you want to make use of assignments that you’ve previously submitted and have had marked, whether in another current course, another offering of the same course, for a previously taken course at Fanshawe, or for a previously taken course at another school, you should have a conversation with your Course Instructor to make sure that those assignments can be used and to make sure that you’ll still be meeting the requirements of the current assignment by using them.
• If you are working with a peer tutor or having a friend or family member review or spell and grammar check your work, make sure that the academic work that you submit is reflective of your own thoughts and written in your own words. It’s important to keep in mind that there is a difference between having your work reviewed and having it edited. There is also a significant difference between having your work reviewed and having it rewritten.
• If someone asks you to complete their academic work (which would be acting to assist or facilitate an Academic Offence), it’s best to decline their request or avoid responding to their text message or email.

Refer to the Appendix: Student Supports and Services for help and resources .

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