{"id":125,"date":"2023-07-18T03:48:46","date_gmt":"2023-07-18T07:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/?post_type=chapter&p=125"},"modified":"2025-06-13T14:09:25","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T18:09:25","slug":"the-academic-integrity-spectrum-from-help-to-cheating","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/chapter\/the-academic-integrity-spectrum-from-help-to-cheating\/","title":{"raw":"The Academic Integrity Spectrum: From Help to Cheating","rendered":"The Academic Integrity Spectrum: From Help to Cheating"},"content":{"raw":"The best tip I have is that you should try to understand that there is a \u2018spectrum\u2019 of behaviors involving working with others on activities and assignments related to your university studies. On one side is \u201clegitimate\u201d help: The closer you are to activities suggested by or required by your professor, or services offered by your university, the safer you\u2019ll be. And the further away you are from this \u2013 the closer you are to paying people you don\u2019t know to work on an assignment for you \u2013 the closer to academic dishonesty you are. And there are some areas in between. Here are four \u201czones\u201d I\u2019ve come up with to help you classify which types of help are more likely to be acceptable, which ones you should be careful about, and which ones you should avoid.\r\n

The Green Zone<\/strong><\/h1>\r\nForms of support that fall into this category are\u00a0 seen as more or less \u201clegitimate\u201d sources of help from your professor\u2019s and\/or the university policy\u2019s perspective. They are allowed or even encouraged by professors and the university as a whole because they are designed to help students learn and succeed where they may have challenges.\r\n\r\nHere are some things that would fall quite clearly on the \u201cOK\u201d side of the spectrum:\r\n

Assigned group work<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\r\nThis is the classic professor-sanctioned version of \u201cworking together\u201d on an assignment. As educators have recognized how much learning happens in the interactions we have with peers, these assignments have become more common. Your professor will (hopefully) make clear what each group member is meant to contribute and how the group and individuals will be evaluated. (If they are not clear, you can ask for clarification!) In this case, your professor expects you to work together with others, not only to \u201cdo your own work.\u201d This can sometimes be tricky to navigate because just like in the outside-of-school world, not everyone always does their fair share of work (this is probably another reason professors assign group work: it\u2019s realistic). In their meta-analysis of academic integrity, McClung and Schnieder (2014) describe being a \u201cslacker\u201d in group work as a kind of academic dishonesty. If you experience problems with someone not doing the work they agreed to, it\u2019s important to bring the concern to your instructor.\r\n

In-class peer review<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\r\nThis is a formalized, classroom version of the type of informal help many people like to get on their assignments. Most writing classes use some form of peer feedback \u2013 I often use it in my own courses. The useful thing about this (compared to informal or paid editing) is that because your instructor will help guide the process, everyone will be aware of the standards and criteria they\u2019re looking for in a successful paper. Usually, your professor will offer some kind of rubric or criteria to follow, and will often provide a mini \u201ctraining\u201d for the class before you engage in this. Getting feedback from a variety of sources can be very useful for you as a writer, and seeing what other people are writing in your class can be helpful so you see what the possible approaches to the assignment might look like. It\u2019s helpful to provide your fellow academic writers with what rhetoric scholar Peter Elbow (1973) calls a \u201cmovie of your mind\u201d when you read their paper: What made sense to you? What didn\u2019t? Where were you confused, and where were you delighted? What words or phrases made an impression on you? This can help the writer (you!) make decisions about how to revise the paper to make it better.\r\n

Campus writing centers or learning centers<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\r\nWriting centres are common on almost every campus, although they aren\u2019t always called the \u201cwriting centre.\u201d In places like this, you may find sessions, materials, or workshops about things like improving your writing, note-taking skills, general study skills, (not) procrastinating, planning assignments, and other practical help with academic tasks. Most writing centres employ peer tutors \u2013 often students like you, but who may have more experience with writing \u2013 who you can meet with in one-on-one consultations to discuss your written assignments. You should note that writing centre philosophy is very clear that they see their role as helping to \u201cproduce better writers, not better writing\u201d (North, 1984, p. 438). This means that they will help you think through all the issues involved in producing well-written papers, but they will usually not \u201cedit\u201d or \u201cfix the grammar\u201d in any given paper. They may, however, try to help you with the tools you might need to do that on your own.\r\n

Accessible learning centres or centres for students with disabilities<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\r\nIf you have, or suspect you may have, a learning disability or another condition that may lead to challenges with completing academic work, your campus has a centre you can register with that may be able to offer assistance. Depending on your situation, there are a variety of services they may offer: They might be able to provide someone to read tests and quizzes to you, provide extra time on exams, help record your lectures, make your textbooks into audiobooks, and so on.\r\n

The Friend Zone<\/strong><\/h1>\r\nThe next category on the spectrum is one of the most common \u2013 lending a hand to your friends or classmates to help each other succeed in academic endeavors. This kind of informal peer help is usually considered legitimate, but it can cross the line into academic dishonesty if you\u2019re not aware of your professors\u2019 or your university\u2019s expectations. The activities in this category are mostly things students have been doing for hundreds if not thousands of years. The thing you need to be aware of is when it could cross the line between \u201chelp\u201d and \u201cunauthorized collaboration.\u201d This could include things like:\r\n

Study groups<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\r\nIt\u2019s common to form small, informal groups to study for exams or other assignments. People may share notes, discuss ideas, work out problems together, share solutions, and so on. All of this is usually pretty OK but it\u2019s important to ask your professor what they consider acceptable collaboration. Sadly, there are many horror stories of students studying together and then being accused of academic misconduct when turning in substantially similar answers on exams. It\u2019s important that when you work together, you\u2019re helping each other with basic definitions and concepts, but not copying or memorizing word-for-word answers that you plan to write on an exam. In 2012, there was a huge cheating scandal at Harvard that seems to have resulted from students sharing notes, but then completing an online open book exam with markedly similar answers, right down to a misplaced comma in a number. Class group chats might also belong in this category \u2013 they can be great for clarifying information (\u201cwhat was the homework today?\u201d \u201cwas anyone else confused by the chart on page 27 of the reading?\u201d) but they could be used by people who are trying to facilitate cheating or just want to copy your answers.\r\n

Informal peer review or peer editing of papers<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\r\nAgain, this is quite common \u2013 I think most people ask a roommate, friend, or family member to look over a paper from time to time. I usually tell my students that this is fine with me as long as that other person isn\u2019t making substantial changes to the paper. I\u2019ll touch more on this in the section on professional editors below, but a general rule is: the more someone is focused on \u201csurface-level\u201d help like grammar, punctuation, formatting, fonts, line spacing, and the like,\u00a0 the more \u201cOK\u201d it is. If you start getting into having someone else re-write whole sentences, you may be in trouble.\r\n

The Grey Zone<\/strong><\/h1>\r\nUsually working together with friends is OK, as long as you\u2019re not rewriting their papers or copying their answers. Now we move into more of a grey area still: \u201cstuff you pay for.\u201d I don\u2019t think it\u2019s 100% wrong to pay for help with academic work: Some of this can be acceptable, some might not be. The interesting thing about this grey zone is that most of these things can be done ethically or unethically. For example, if you use Chegg to look at sample problems to help you figure out how they got to their solutions, or pay an editor to do light grammatical edits that they explain to you, or pay a tutor to explain difficult concepts to you in, say, your first language or to help you generally supplement your knowledge of a particular subject \u2013 you\u2019re probably OK. (You may be out some money, but you wouldn't necessarily be breaking any rules \u2013 though your mileage may vary depending on what your professor requires and what your university\u2019s policy is.)\r\n

Websites like Chegg and Coursehero<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\r\nAt best, these are monetized versions of everything mentioned in the previous section - instead of friends, you\u2019re paying a website to give you access to a lot of peoples\u2019 notes, assignments, and other various materials. At worst, though, these are cheating subscriptions where some students hire\u00a0 \u201ctutors\u201d to actually complete work for them. Again, as long as your goal is understanding material, and you are not using these sites as a \u201cshortcut,\u201d you may be in the clear \u2013 but you should also know that part of the ethical grey areas of these sites is that it can be argued that they are a party to the stealing of professors\u2019 intellectual property. Some universities have begun filing lawsuits against companies who allow students to share things like past exams. This is probably not something you want to be involved in but, overall, we can\u2019t say these sites are only used for cheating. I know plenty of students who use them to aid their overall understanding of course materials.\r\n

Paying a professional editor\/proofreader<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\r\nThis, too, is a monetized version of the kinds of peer help you might find in the other sections. To make sure you\u2019re in the clear, there are two things you\u2019ll want to do: Make sure your instructor or supervisor is OK with you getting some professional help \u201cpolishing\u201d your writing (which they may not always be), and make sure that the kind of editing you are paying for is what professional editors call \u201ccopy editing\u201d (which deals with helping to fix grammar) and\/or \u201cproofreading\u201d (which deals with typographical errors, formatting, and so on). Other types of professional editing services include \u201cstructural editing,\u201d which usually involves making significant changes to the content and structure of a piece of writing, and \u201cstylistic editing,\u201d which usually has more to do with word choice. Many professional editors are aware that doing the latter two types of editing is considered unethical when it comes to students\u2019 academic work. In fact, Editors Canada, a professional association for editors, has strict guidelines on editing student work, only permitting \u201cflagging\u201d of errors rather than \u201cfixing\u201d them for undergraduates, and, to a limited degree, minor corrections to grammar and word choice for graduate students. Not every editor will abide by these guidelines, but you will be safest if your goal in approaching a paid editor is mainly to have them help you fix your grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors.\r\n

Paying a professional tutor<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\r\nThere are several situations in which students may want to do this. The most common case I\u2019ve encountered tends to be language-related: You may want to hire someone to offer general help with a language (often English, if you\u2019re looking to improve your overall ability to function academically in that language, though it is also not uncommon with those studying \u201cforeign\u201d languages who want to practice outside of class), or you may want to hire someone who can explain complicated concepts to you in a language you are more familiar with. There are a growing number of tutoring agencies who offer subject-matter tutoring in students\u2019 first languages (i.e., languages other than English), and as long as the tutors are not offering to complete your work, this can be a helpful way to get up to speed in difficult courses. (However, you may find that as you get further along in your studies, it makes more sense to learn the material in English; Zhang-Wu (2022) found that some students she interviewed stopped asking for help in their first language after their first semester or two of study in English.) Based on ongoing research I am engaged in with some colleagues in B.C., it does seem that some of the students who pay tutors for help do occasionally find themselves in what I have called the \u201cno-go zone\u201d below. It\u2019s not a good idea to ask tutors to complete assignments for you because then you\u2019re less likely to learn the material and more likely to not master it and perform poorly on exams and other forms of assessment.\r\n

The No-Go Zone<\/strong><\/h1>\r\nFinally, we come to the \u201cno-go zone\u201d \u2013 if you find yourself here, you\u2019re in trouble. Students sometimes find themselves here out of desperation or a sense that anything would be better than flunking out of university. (Personally, I disagree: I think being expelled for cheating is worse than getting bad grades.) Obviously, as a professor, I think all of these things are wrong and I understand that sometimes it feels like there\u2019s no other way out, but I would strongly encourage you to avoid all of the following:\r\n

Paying for a pre-written paper from a \u201cpaper mill\u201d (or finding one for free online) and turning it in with your name on it<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\r\nThis is now a fairly \u201cold school\u201d method of cheating. It is often easily detected because the papers are often available online, so all a professor has to do is pop a few phrases into Google and find that the paper has been plagiarized. Instructors who teach courses with writing assignments generally get to know students\u2019 writing styles pretty well and are pretty good at noticing when something doesn\u2019t look right. 0\/10, not recommended.\r\n

Paying someone to write a paper for you<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\r\nThis is still wrong, but in theory it\u2019s easier to \u201cget away with\u201d because if you are paying someone to write an original paper, it will be \u201cfree of plagiarism.\u201d However, it comes with many other dangers that make it not worth your time. First, you cannot guarantee the quality of a paper like this: Many are written by people outside North America who may not be familiar with the conventions of academic writing here, and you can\u2019t be certain they won\u2019t resort to some copying-and-pasting or Google Translate-facilitated plagiarism. (I have seen some papers that were clearly just translated from foreign-language paper mills.) Second, and perhaps more seriously, there is a growing trend of blackmail among these \u201cservice\u201d providers. It is now not uncommon for a \u201cprofessional paper-writer\u201d to demand more money and threaten to expose the student who paid them \u2013 and in many cases, they have no hesitation to email the student\u2019s professor or department head if they don\u2019t get what they want. I have heard of multiple cases of this in the last few months alone. This is a shady business, and we don\u2019t know what lengths they might be willing to go to try to extort money from students. This can get scary, so for many reasons, it is best avoided.\r\n

Prompting an AI language model to write a paper, solve a problem, or generate code for you<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\r\nAs I write this in the Fall of 2022, everyone is talking about AI-generated text (and art, for that matter). ChatGPT and other programs appear to be able to answer informational questions correctly, fix errors in computer programmers\u2019 code accurately, and create whole-cloth original examples of essays based on complicated prompts. We\u2019ll never have to write anything again if computers can do it for us, right? Well, maybe not. AI language models can \u201cdo\u201d tasks, but they cannot think, reason, make inferences, have ideas, or even cite sources or provide references. You might be able to get an AI to write a very generic short essay that looks impressive on the surface, but at this point it simply does not appear capable of producing a truly well-written academic paper of the type you might be assigned in a university course. This might change, but you can be sure that if it does, professors will change the way they give assignments in order to make AI-generated assignments less feasible.\r\n

Hiring a \u201ctutor\u201d who provides you with answers, takes a course online for you, or impersonates you during an exam<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\r\nI hope it goes without saying that this is the no-goiest of the no-go zone. Not only is this academic fraud, which is going to be against the policy of every university in the world, but this is the kind of thing that people can and do actually get arrested for. Please, please, please do not do these things.","rendered":"

The best tip I have is that you should try to understand that there is a \u2018spectrum\u2019 of behaviors involving working with others on activities and assignments related to your university studies. On one side is \u201clegitimate\u201d help: The closer you are to activities suggested by or required by your professor, or services offered by your university, the safer you\u2019ll be. And the further away you are from this \u2013 the closer you are to paying people you don\u2019t know to work on an assignment for you \u2013 the closer to academic dishonesty you are. And there are some areas in between. Here are four \u201czones\u201d I\u2019ve come up with to help you classify which types of help are more likely to be acceptable, which ones you should be careful about, and which ones you should avoid.<\/p>\n

The Green Zone<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Forms of support that fall into this category are\u00a0 seen as more or less \u201clegitimate\u201d sources of help from your professor\u2019s and\/or the university policy\u2019s perspective. They are allowed or even encouraged by professors and the university as a whole because they are designed to help students learn and succeed where they may have challenges.<\/p>\n

Here are some things that would fall quite clearly on the \u201cOK\u201d side of the spectrum:<\/p>\n

Assigned group work<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

This is the classic professor-sanctioned version of \u201cworking together\u201d on an assignment. As educators have recognized how much learning happens in the interactions we have with peers, these assignments have become more common. Your professor will (hopefully) make clear what each group member is meant to contribute and how the group and individuals will be evaluated. (If they are not clear, you can ask for clarification!) In this case, your professor expects you to work together with others, not only to \u201cdo your own work.\u201d This can sometimes be tricky to navigate because just like in the outside-of-school world, not everyone always does their fair share of work (this is probably another reason professors assign group work: it\u2019s realistic). In their meta-analysis of academic integrity, McClung and Schnieder (2014) describe being a \u201cslacker\u201d in group work as a kind of academic dishonesty. If you experience problems with someone not doing the work they agreed to, it\u2019s important to bring the concern to your instructor.<\/p>\n

In-class peer review<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

This is a formalized, classroom version of the type of informal help many people like to get on their assignments. Most writing classes use some form of peer feedback \u2013 I often use it in my own courses. The useful thing about this (compared to informal or paid editing) is that because your instructor will help guide the process, everyone will be aware of the standards and criteria they\u2019re looking for in a successful paper. Usually, your professor will offer some kind of rubric or criteria to follow, and will often provide a mini \u201ctraining\u201d for the class before you engage in this. Getting feedback from a variety of sources can be very useful for you as a writer, and seeing what other people are writing in your class can be helpful so you see what the possible approaches to the assignment might look like. It\u2019s helpful to provide your fellow academic writers with what rhetoric scholar Peter Elbow (1973) calls a \u201cmovie of your mind\u201d when you read their paper: What made sense to you? What didn\u2019t? Where were you confused, and where were you delighted? What words or phrases made an impression on you? This can help the writer (you!) make decisions about how to revise the paper to make it better.<\/p>\n

Campus writing centers or learning centers<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

Writing centres are common on almost every campus, although they aren\u2019t always called the \u201cwriting centre.\u201d In places like this, you may find sessions, materials, or workshops about things like improving your writing, note-taking skills, general study skills, (not) procrastinating, planning assignments, and other practical help with academic tasks. Most writing centres employ peer tutors \u2013 often students like you, but who may have more experience with writing \u2013 who you can meet with in one-on-one consultations to discuss your written assignments. You should note that writing centre philosophy is very clear that they see their role as helping to \u201cproduce better writers, not better writing\u201d (North, 1984, p. 438). This means that they will help you think through all the issues involved in producing well-written papers, but they will usually not \u201cedit\u201d or \u201cfix the grammar\u201d in any given paper. They may, however, try to help you with the tools you might need to do that on your own.<\/p>\n

Accessible learning centres or centres for students with disabilities<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

If you have, or suspect you may have, a learning disability or another condition that may lead to challenges with completing academic work, your campus has a centre you can register with that may be able to offer assistance. Depending on your situation, there are a variety of services they may offer: They might be able to provide someone to read tests and quizzes to you, provide extra time on exams, help record your lectures, make your textbooks into audiobooks, and so on.<\/p>\n

The Friend Zone<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The next category on the spectrum is one of the most common \u2013 lending a hand to your friends or classmates to help each other succeed in academic endeavors. This kind of informal peer help is usually considered legitimate, but it can cross the line into academic dishonesty if you\u2019re not aware of your professors\u2019 or your university\u2019s expectations. The activities in this category are mostly things students have been doing for hundreds if not thousands of years. The thing you need to be aware of is when it could cross the line between \u201chelp\u201d and \u201cunauthorized collaboration.\u201d This could include things like:<\/p>\n

Study groups<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

It\u2019s common to form small, informal groups to study for exams or other assignments. People may share notes, discuss ideas, work out problems together, share solutions, and so on. All of this is usually pretty OK but it\u2019s important to ask your professor what they consider acceptable collaboration. Sadly, there are many horror stories of students studying together and then being accused of academic misconduct when turning in substantially similar answers on exams. It\u2019s important that when you work together, you\u2019re helping each other with basic definitions and concepts, but not copying or memorizing word-for-word answers that you plan to write on an exam. In 2012, there was a huge cheating scandal at Harvard that seems to have resulted from students sharing notes, but then completing an online open book exam with markedly similar answers, right down to a misplaced comma in a number. Class group chats might also belong in this category \u2013 they can be great for clarifying information (\u201cwhat was the homework today?\u201d \u201cwas anyone else confused by the chart on page 27 of the reading?\u201d) but they could be used by people who are trying to facilitate cheating or just want to copy your answers.<\/p>\n

Informal peer review or peer editing of papers<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

Again, this is quite common \u2013 I think most people ask a roommate, friend, or family member to look over a paper from time to time. I usually tell my students that this is fine with me as long as that other person isn\u2019t making substantial changes to the paper. I\u2019ll touch more on this in the section on professional editors below, but a general rule is: the more someone is focused on \u201csurface-level\u201d help like grammar, punctuation, formatting, fonts, line spacing, and the like,\u00a0 the more \u201cOK\u201d it is. If you start getting into having someone else re-write whole sentences, you may be in trouble.<\/p>\n

The Grey Zone<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Usually working together with friends is OK, as long as you\u2019re not rewriting their papers or copying their answers. Now we move into more of a grey area still: \u201cstuff you pay for.\u201d I don\u2019t think it\u2019s 100% wrong to pay for help with academic work: Some of this can be acceptable, some might not be. The interesting thing about this grey zone is that most of these things can be done ethically or unethically. For example, if you use Chegg to look at sample problems to help you figure out how they got to their solutions, or pay an editor to do light grammatical edits that they explain to you, or pay a tutor to explain difficult concepts to you in, say, your first language or to help you generally supplement your knowledge of a particular subject \u2013 you\u2019re probably OK. (You may be out some money, but you wouldn’t necessarily be breaking any rules \u2013 though your mileage may vary depending on what your professor requires and what your university\u2019s policy is.)<\/p>\n

Websites like Chegg and Coursehero<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

At best, these are monetized versions of everything mentioned in the previous section – instead of friends, you\u2019re paying a website to give you access to a lot of peoples\u2019 notes, assignments, and other various materials. At worst, though, these are cheating subscriptions where some students hire\u00a0 \u201ctutors\u201d to actually complete work for them. Again, as long as your goal is understanding material, and you are not using these sites as a \u201cshortcut,\u201d you may be in the clear \u2013 but you should also know that part of the ethical grey areas of these sites is that it can be argued that they are a party to the stealing of professors\u2019 intellectual property. Some universities have begun filing lawsuits against companies who allow students to share things like past exams. This is probably not something you want to be involved in but, overall, we can\u2019t say these sites are only used for cheating. I know plenty of students who use them to aid their overall understanding of course materials.<\/p>\n

Paying a professional editor\/proofreader<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

This, too, is a monetized version of the kinds of peer help you might find in the other sections. To make sure you\u2019re in the clear, there are two things you\u2019ll want to do: Make sure your instructor or supervisor is OK with you getting some professional help \u201cpolishing\u201d your writing (which they may not always be), and make sure that the kind of editing you are paying for is what professional editors call \u201ccopy editing\u201d (which deals with helping to fix grammar) and\/or \u201cproofreading\u201d (which deals with typographical errors, formatting, and so on). Other types of professional editing services include \u201cstructural editing,\u201d which usually involves making significant changes to the content and structure of a piece of writing, and \u201cstylistic editing,\u201d which usually has more to do with word choice. Many professional editors are aware that doing the latter two types of editing is considered unethical when it comes to students\u2019 academic work. In fact, Editors Canada, a professional association for editors, has strict guidelines on editing student work, only permitting \u201cflagging\u201d of errors rather than \u201cfixing\u201d them for undergraduates, and, to a limited degree, minor corrections to grammar and word choice for graduate students. Not every editor will abide by these guidelines, but you will be safest if your goal in approaching a paid editor is mainly to have them help you fix your grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors.<\/p>\n

Paying a professional tutor<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

There are several situations in which students may want to do this. The most common case I\u2019ve encountered tends to be language-related: You may want to hire someone to offer general help with a language (often English, if you\u2019re looking to improve your overall ability to function academically in that language, though it is also not uncommon with those studying \u201cforeign\u201d languages who want to practice outside of class), or you may want to hire someone who can explain complicated concepts to you in a language you are more familiar with. There are a growing number of tutoring agencies who offer subject-matter tutoring in students\u2019 first languages (i.e., languages other than English), and as long as the tutors are not offering to complete your work, this can be a helpful way to get up to speed in difficult courses. (However, you may find that as you get further along in your studies, it makes more sense to learn the material in English; Zhang-Wu (2022) found that some students she interviewed stopped asking for help in their first language after their first semester or two of study in English.) Based on ongoing research I am engaged in with some colleagues in B.C., it does seem that some of the students who pay tutors for help do occasionally find themselves in what I have called the \u201cno-go zone\u201d below. It\u2019s not a good idea to ask tutors to complete assignments for you because then you\u2019re less likely to learn the material and more likely to not master it and perform poorly on exams and other forms of assessment.<\/p>\n

The No-Go Zone<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Finally, we come to the \u201cno-go zone\u201d \u2013 if you find yourself here, you\u2019re in trouble. Students sometimes find themselves here out of desperation or a sense that anything would be better than flunking out of university. (Personally, I disagree: I think being expelled for cheating is worse than getting bad grades.) Obviously, as a professor, I think all of these things are wrong and I understand that sometimes it feels like there\u2019s no other way out, but I would strongly encourage you to avoid all of the following:<\/p>\n

Paying for a pre-written paper from a \u201cpaper mill\u201d (or finding one for free online) and turning it in with your name on it<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

This is now a fairly \u201cold school\u201d method of cheating. It is often easily detected because the papers are often available online, so all a professor has to do is pop a few phrases into Google and find that the paper has been plagiarized. Instructors who teach courses with writing assignments generally get to know students\u2019 writing styles pretty well and are pretty good at noticing when something doesn\u2019t look right. 0\/10, not recommended.<\/p>\n

Paying someone to write a paper for you<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

This is still wrong, but in theory it\u2019s easier to \u201cget away with\u201d because if you are paying someone to write an original paper, it will be \u201cfree of plagiarism.\u201d However, it comes with many other dangers that make it not worth your time. First, you cannot guarantee the quality of a paper like this: Many are written by people outside North America who may not be familiar with the conventions of academic writing here, and you can\u2019t be certain they won\u2019t resort to some copying-and-pasting or Google Translate-facilitated plagiarism. (I have seen some papers that were clearly just translated from foreign-language paper mills.) Second, and perhaps more seriously, there is a growing trend of blackmail among these \u201cservice\u201d providers. It is now not uncommon for a \u201cprofessional paper-writer\u201d to demand more money and threaten to expose the student who paid them \u2013 and in many cases, they have no hesitation to email the student\u2019s professor or department head if they don\u2019t get what they want. I have heard of multiple cases of this in the last few months alone. This is a shady business, and we don\u2019t know what lengths they might be willing to go to try to extort money from students. This can get scary, so for many reasons, it is best avoided.<\/p>\n

Prompting an AI language model to write a paper, solve a problem, or generate code for you<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

As I write this in the Fall of 2022, everyone is talking about AI-generated text (and art, for that matter). ChatGPT and other programs appear to be able to answer informational questions correctly, fix errors in computer programmers\u2019 code accurately, and create whole-cloth original examples of essays based on complicated prompts. We\u2019ll never have to write anything again if computers can do it for us, right? Well, maybe not. AI language models can \u201cdo\u201d tasks, but they cannot think, reason, make inferences, have ideas, or even cite sources or provide references. You might be able to get an AI to write a very generic short essay that looks impressive on the surface, but at this point it simply does not appear capable of producing a truly well-written academic paper of the type you might be assigned in a university course. This might change, but you can be sure that if it does, professors will change the way they give assignments in order to make AI-generated assignments less feasible.<\/p>\n

Hiring a \u201ctutor\u201d who provides you with answers, takes a course online for you, or impersonates you during an exam<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

I hope it goes without saying that this is the no-goiest of the no-go zone. Not only is this academic fraud, which is going to be against the policy of every university in the world, but this is the kind of thing that people can and do actually get arrested for. Please, please, please do not do these things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1782,"menu_order":9,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-125","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":110,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1782"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":526,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/125\/revisions\/526"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/110"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/125\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=125"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=125"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}