Working with integrity involves doing your work according to expectations and asking your professor or teaching assistant for help or clarification.
Paying or asking someone to do your work isn’t integrity. Neither is falsifying information, making up data, plagiarism, submitting the same assignment or other work in more than one course, helping someone commit misconduct, copying some else’s work or conducting a study with human participants before receiving research ethics board approval.
The integrity of some actions depends on the context. In a course, for example, collaboration may be permitted for some assessments but not others. Some courses will use and permit the use of artificial intelligence tools (e.g., ChatGPT), others will not. Permission to use textbooks or other resources like the web, getting help, and asking questions may also vary. Check your syllabus or with your professor if you’re not sure.
Let’s look at some details.
Collaboration
Learn about situations when collaboration is allowed (like studying with friends before a test) and not allowed (like writing an individual report for or with someone else).
When group work is authorized by your professor, all group members contribute to the final product and everyone’s contribution should be acknowledged. The workload should be fairly distributed. Each member is responsible for the integrity of the final product and should read the final version, save a copy and check the referencing of sources in all sections of the work.
Beware! An increasing number of companies offer you answers to exam questions (e.g., Chegg) or write your essays for you, for a price. This is a serious form of academic misconduct subject to the associated processes and consequences. Furthermore, these companies have been known to blackmail students for more money.
Written tests, exams and similar assessments
Be sure to check the expectations for assessments. Many exams and similar assessments are done individually, without you consulting or working with others, but there are others where collaboration is encouraged. When in doubt, ask your professor.
Some assessments are open book; others are closed. Closed-book exams must be done without using anything but your own mind. Open-book assessment can mean viewing just the textbook, the textbook and your notes, or any resource. When in doubt, ask your professor beforehand.
While studying for exams and similar assessments, find another student or study group to work with. Practice summarizing the concepts for each other and asking each other questions. This is a great way to learn.
Individual work like essays and reports
When you’re working individually, properly document all your source material and reference it. Don’t share your individual work with anyone, because you could be accused of plagiarism if part of your work is copied, with or without your permission, and submitted by another student.
Using material from other sources is appropriate for background research to write an essay or report, for example. But when you use these sources in your work, you must clearly distinguish your own ideas from those other sources by acknowledging the other sources directly.
When considering using artificial intelligence and other technological tools, carefully check the course expectations and clarify any questions with your professor in advance. There’s more information in the FAQ for artificial intelligence on this page.
There are many citation formats, and the appropriate one will vary by discipline (and even within). When in doubt, ask. See the library workshops and other resources.
Commit to upholding academic integrity in your courses
There are a number of ways to uphold academic integrity. Here are a few:
