Academic Integrity

Level 1 violations may be minor in nature and affect a small portion of the assessment work in question.

Examples (not intended to be an exhaustive list):

• Failure to acknowledge working with another student (third party), unless the instructor explicitly authorizes such work
• Failure to attempt to cite or give proper acknowledgement in a small/minor portion of the assignment

Mandatory Sanctions 

1. Educational Sanction (listed below), AND
2. at least one of the following sanctions:
   • Resubmission of the original assessment piece.
   • Submission of a new assessment piece
   • A portion of assessment work receives a grade of “0”
   • A penalty sanctioned at the discretion of faculty that results in a reduced overall grade
   • Or, another sanction as deemed appropriate by the faculty.

Level 2 violations are of a more serious or extensive nature than the ones described in Level 1 or are those that affect a larger or more significant portion of the assessment.

Examples (not intended to be an exhaustive list):

• Recognizing for the first time that a student has breached academic integrity on more than one occasion but has not been previously reported.
• More than one form of violation within one assignment.
• Plagiarizing portions of a written assignment or project.
• Facilitating copying during an exam or in the completion of work.
• Submitting the same work, or major portions thereof, to satisfy the requirements of more than one course without permission from the instructor.
• Cheating during a test, exam or other types of academic assessment (this could include using prohibited materials such as books, notes, calculators, or other electronic devices).
• Receiving/providing assistance from others (e.g. research, statistical, computer programming, field data collection help, or technical art/design production help) that constitutes an essential element in the undertaking without acknowledging such assistance in a paper, examination, or project.
• Repeat violation at a Level 1, where education sanctions have been applied, may be considered to raise the violation to a Level 2.

Mandatory Sanctions

1. Educational Sanction (listed below), AND
2. A grade of zero (0) on the assignment.

Optional Sanctions

Faculty may select additional sanctions. Examples of these optional sanctions are (but are not limited to):

• Submission of a new assessment piece for full or partial grade
• Presentation to Faculty on Academic Integrity for bonus marks

Level 3 violations affect a sizable portion of the assessment work, involve premeditation, and/or students who have repeated Level 1 and Level 2 violations. 

Examples (not intended to be an exhaustive list):

• Removing posted or reserve material, preventing other students from having access to materials.
• Falsification of data or inventing and/or deliberately altering material (e.g. citing a source that does not exist).
• Engaging in contract cheating through the selling or purchasing of assessments for submission for grades.
• Collaborating before an exam to develop methods of exchanging information and implementation thereof.
• Use or distribution of material which has been acquired through unauthorized means.
• repeat violations at Level 1 or Level 2, where education sanctions have been applied, may be considered to raised the violation to a Level 3.

Mandatory Sanctions

1. Educational Sanction (listed below), AND
2. A grade of zero (0) for the course.

Level 4 violations are reserved for the most serious breaches of academic integrity and/or incidents preceded by repeated violations at all previous levels.

Examples (not intended to be an exhaustive list):

• Providing another student with login information in an attempt to have that person complete the assessment work (false impersonation).
• Infractions of academic integrity resembling criminal activity (e.g. forging a grade form, stealing an examination, buying an exam, falsifying a transcript).
• False impersonation in an exam.
• Sabotaging another student’s work through actions designed to prevent the student from successfully completing an assignment.
• Repeat violations at Level 3, where educational sanctions have been applied, may be considered to raised the violation to a Level 4.

Mandatory Sanctions

1. Educational Sanction (listed below), AND
2. Suspension from the College for a minimum of one semester or regular program delivery. Faculty may choose Option ‘a’ or ‘b’:
   a. One to Three Semesters: Must be approved by the Dean of the applicable School.
   b. Three or More Semesters: Must be approved by the Dean in consultation with the Vice-President Academic.

Your faculty may assign one of the many Information Literacy Workshops to you as an educational sanction. These workshops are also available to students who simply want to learn how to cite and research better. Here are some of the ones commonly assigned:

• Avoiding Plagiarism - This workshop covers plagiarism and provides hands-on activities on avoiding plagiarism and working with citations.
• APA Citations for Beginners - Laying the foundation for successful citation-building you will gain an understanding of the use of in-text citations, identify different source formats and the parts of a citation, and practice using a citation guide to build basic citations.
• Advanced APA Citations - Providing practice for those with the needed basic skills to look at more complex sources as well as using the MS Word citation tool.

The listing of workshop dates and times is updated each semester and can be found here.

In some cases, your faculty may assign a one-on-one meeting with a resource specialist to ensure that you have a good understanding of the violation that has occurred and also to provide you assistance to ensure that further violations are avoided.

One-on-one sessions can be booked by contacting Marcia Steeves, the Academic Integrity and Copyright Officer.

One-on-ones with Tutoring or Learning Strategy Advisors can be made online.