University lecturers frequently push students to produce well informed and original work. To do so, you will need to search for, and be familiar with the ideas and theories or practices of many other people. It is important that you understand the rules of academic integrity, so that you are not accused of cheating, such as plagiarism, and collusion. Thinking through the values associated with 'academic integrity' will assist you to be prepared for operating as an independent thinker in the university community. The important thing about thinking through ideas about academic integrity is that it will help you to develop the good habits of citation and referencing as you absorb information, paraphrase ideas and quote the words of other people.

Watch the Plagiarism and Academic Integrity Simulation at Rutgers University.

What does academic integrity mean for me?

"The intellectual challenge you face in your academic work is to go beyond what you learn in your textbooks, in lectures, and in the library -- to evaluate, rethink, synthesize, and make your own the information, data, and concepts you find in your sources. The greatest satisfaction of academic work comes from making something original, genuine, and new out of the material you have learned in your courses and discovered in your research. Doing original work is the most demanding, but also the most rewarding" (ref Princeton University )

Without an adequate understanding of academic integrity, and a set of skills which enable you to reflect integrity in your academic work, it is possible to make poor choices. Different situations require different choices and responses. For example, check your response to the following situations:

• Can I use other people's diagrams, and adapt them for my purposes?
• My friend emails her assignments for editing to her sister who graduated three years ago. She says I should do the same thing. Is this cheating?
• I am not very good with MSWord. I would like to pay for professional formatting and presentation of my documents. Is that allowed?
• Can I use work I previously wrote for an assignment I have to get completed by the end of the month?

It may be that in each of the above situations you understand the need to acknowledge your sources, but if your attempts to do so are not technically correct, you may actually be accused of plagiarism, even though this wasn't your intention.

This tutorial is designed to help you make the appropriate choices about how you go about doing your work at university.

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