Academic integrity dos and don'ts

Academic integrity is about doing the right thing in four major ways:

Acknowledge others
Do your own work and check before submitting
Be honest
Take responsibility.

The following practical examples will help you to understand what to do, and what could be considered a breach of academic integrity. We also offer a range of help throughout your degree, including comprehensive study support and a range of health and wellbeing services.

Acknowledge others

When you submit work without acknowledging where you have used the work or ideas of others, could be considered plagiarism. Plagiarism is the use of words, ideas, code, media, research findings, internet sources or other material of others as your own without appropriate credit or referencing. You should always use proper referencing to acknowledge other people’s work in your assessments and other tasks. This is more than just including quotes – you must also acknowledge their ideas and research.

Sometimes unintentional plagiarism happens if your study skills are not as strong as they could be. Copy and pasting from sources, poor note-taking skills or not fully understanding academic writing and referencing can result in unintentional plagiarism.

When note-taking and writing, you need to carefully distinguish between your own work and where you have summarised, paraphrased and quoted sources to support your point of view.

Use the Deakin guide to referencing to learn how to acknowledge others’ work. Before you submit your work, use Turnitin to check if there is any unoriginal material in your work.

Read the student guide to copyright if you need to reproduce others’ work (such as an image or diagram), and your work may become public – for example, you are creating a digital portfolio/blog or plan to publish your work in any other way.

Case study:
Lyn believes that she has referenced all her sources appropriately. However, through careless note-taking, she has overlooked that she paraphrased a source but left it uncited.

Even though Lyn left a source uncited unintentionally, she may face an allegation of having breached academic integrity standards.

Do your own work and check before submitting

Don’t ever let someone else do your assessment! You are enrolled at Deakin to learn and will graduate with a qualification by demonstrating learning outcomes to the University. If something or someone else completes an assessment for you – for example, writes your essay or sits your exam – then you have not earned that qualification.

There are some common pitfalls.

Contract cheating

‘Contract cheating’ is where you get someone to do part of or all your assignment or assessment, and then claim it as your own. This includes asking friends or family to do the work for you, or paying a company that promotes ‘study or assignment help’. Commercial contract cheating services offer to sell you essays, assignments, study notes, exams or other assessment materials; help you study if you upload previous work from your course and sit exams on your behalf. Some of these services just offer ‘help’ with your work, while others are more explicit and ‘guarantee’ you a high grade. Either way, they’re illegal.

If you get an email about contract cheating services, please hit the ‘Report phishing’ button or forward the email to spam@deakin.edu.au. If you know of students who are promoting or using contract cheating services, you can raise your concerns with the Student Conduct Team (this can be anonymous).

Collusion

Working with anyone else to producemany part of your individual assessment is not allowed – even if no money is exchanged. This is called collusion.

It’s also unacceptable to submit the work, or part of a work, of someone who studied the unit or topic previously, even with their permission.

We encourage you to edit your own assignments. You can ask someone else to read over your work, but they cannot do any significant editing or re-writing for you. You can also discuss work with classmates and work out what is expected, but the work you submit must be written solely by you.

You should never write for others, either – you could also face an allegation of collusion.

Case study:
Vittoria is confused about an assignment and discusses it with her friend Caroline, who studied the same unit last year. Vittoria asks Caroline whether she can have a look at her old assignment, and Caroline lends it to her. Caroline explains the criteria she used to analyse the sources. Vittoria runs out of time and submits her paper using the same criteria and assignment structure as Caroline’s.

Both Vittoria and Caroline could face an allegation of collusion.

Group tasks

The only time you can collaborate with another student to produce an assessment is for an approved group work task. Read the instructions carefully and be sure that your group is clear on what is expected of each student.

All group members’ work should be acknowledged and only those in the group should contribute. Check the Turnitin report for the whole assignment, even if you were responsible for only one section, and never use work done by a group for an individual assessment.

Make sure you discuss the assessment as a whole and that all members of the group are involved in the final submission.

End-of-unit assessments

Artificial intelligence

Generative Artificial Intelligence (genAI) tools like ChatGPT, Copilot and Google Gemini are systems that create content – such as text, images, music, video, and code – by learning patterns from large datasets..

Deakin welcomes the opportunity to engage with emerging technologies in education and seeks to build your capability in the ethical and responsible use of current and emergent technology. Deakin also upholds a commitment to academic integrity and to ensuring high-quality educational outcomes that prepare you for an AI-driven future.

To support your learning, it is recommended that you limit genAl use to assist with specific tasks such as generating ideas, to help you understand difficult concepts, editing your work for length, or to identify grammatical and spelling errors. You must modify any AI-generated content you use. All ideas used in a task must be supported by appropriate peer-reviewed sources and/or reputable data sources. Your final submission should be your own work and show how you have used your own critical thinking skills and what you have learnt in a unit.

To properly use AI tools to help with your assignments or research, you should:

Appropriately cite and reference any text or output generated by genAI in your assignment, along with any other sources you use. You should clearly indicate where in your assessment task you have used AI-generated material.
Understand the genAI tool’s limitations and use it in conjunction with other sources to ensure the credibility and reliability of the information you present. You need to check the accuracy of all information generated by AI tools.
Make sure that the final product is your own work, and not just copied from an AI generator. You can use the generated text as a prompt for inspiration or guidance, but the final submitted assessment must be your own work.

Be honest

Don’t seek an unfair advantage with any of your assessment – this includes making sure that not only is it all your own work, but also covers work you may have previously submitted.

Before you re-use any part of a previous assignment from a different unit (or even the same unit, if you’re repeating it) or any part of an assignment submitted to another institution, you’ll need written permission from your Unit Chair.

Never seek unfair advantage through dishonest behaviour, or by providing false or altered documents, such as medical certificates, academic transcripts or assessment submission receipts. If you need to obtain special consideration, do so honestly and fairly.

Providing fraudulent documentation supporting assessment submissions, including, but not limited to, false or altered information such as medical certificates and assessment submission receipts is a serious breach of academic integrity standards.

Case study:
Amelia’s current assignment is similar to one she did two years ago at another university. She decides to use most of the research that she included in her previous assignment, but with some new analysis.

Amelia may have breached academic integrity – she has already received credit for this work in her old assignment. She should have checked with her Unit Chair before she used any part of her previous work.

Take responsibility

It’s up to you to read your assessment instructions carefully well before the due date. If you are unsure about anything, talk to your Unit Chair as soon as possible.

Deakin staff and students also have a responsibility to support each other to do the right thing. Any student who shares information with other students about ways to breach academic integrity – for example, providing information on contract cheating services or uploading one of your own assignments to a sharing website – may be investigated for a breach of academic integrity.

If you think you have breached academic integrity standards, you may self-report to the Student Success Division, unless a staff member has already raised concerns with you about the potential breach.

You will be invited to an interview with a Student Success Division staff member to discuss details of the self-reported breach and may bring a support person to this meeting. Deakin University Student Association (DUSA) advocates are available free of charge if you need help understanding the process.