Types of Incidents

Some types of misconduct can happen accidentally.  

• An unavoidable mistake might occur, such as a second person appearing in a Respondus recording because a student's roommate forgot their friend was writing an exam that afternoon.

• A well-intentioned student may have a knowledge gap, such as not understanding that using Generative AI “just to get ideas” is still misconduct, or that they can’t collaborate on papers with peers. This may occur if students don’t have previous experience with the Canadian educational system and the rules we consider “obvious.” This may be considered a learning skills issue, rather than an Academic Integrity issue.

• Some misconduct can genuinely happen without a student’s knowledge, like when a student lets their peer borrow their laptop, only to have their peer copy and submit their assignment.  

Unintentional misconduct might or might not need to be filed as an incident, depending on the context. If you do choose to file, the student's level of intentionality can influence penalty selection. 

Did the student undermine the assessment outcomes? In short, did the student gain any advantage over their peers by doing this?  

If the student’s peer stole their work without their knowledge, the student who wrote the work themselves did not gain any advantage on the assessment. 

If the student wrote their assessment in their first language then used Google Translate to convert it to English, and the assessment is not meant to test the student on their language or communication skills, then they did not gain any advantage on the assessment.  

If the student did gain an advantage, it’s also worth considering how much of an advantage they gained. For example, if a student wrote a 5-page paper legitimately and without misconduct, and then used a generative AI tool to write the 1-paragraph summary for their conclusion, they gained an advantage on only a very small portion of the assignment.  

Some situations may be considered misconduct regardless of intention or advantage. If a student fails to follow clearly-stated rules, particularly in a testing situation, then that failure to follow those rules can sometimes be considered misconduct.

For example, if students are clearly instructed that they may not have their phones out during an exam, and a student is caught with a phone in hand, that is misconduct even if the student is not seen using the phone to cheat and claims not to have known. The action is something a) they were clearly and repeatedly warned against, b) not covered by the rubric or assessment questions, and c) compromises the ability of faculty to accurately assess learning outcomes.

Failure to follow evaluation instructions supersedes intention or advantage.

If there was no intention and no advantage, misconduct likely did not occur.  You may have a learning skills issue (such as a gap in knowledge about citations, appropriate AI usage, or collaboration practices) that can best be addressed with student education.

If there is no intention and only minor advantage, this could be misconduct, but it may be better to deal with the issue through student education and in-rubric grade deductions.

For example, if a student wrote most of a paper themselves but used Generative AI to summarize the arguments for their conclusion, you might deduct grades for the rubric section that dealt with the summary, or deduct grades for the percentage of the assessment they did not write themselves, since it did not meet the assessment requirement for original thought. 

Or perhaps a student wrote a paper in their first language, then used Google Translate to translate their words into English. If there are only a few marks in the rubric for spelling and grammar, you could deduct just those marks, and invite the student in for a conversation about what technology is or isn't appropriate to use for your course.

If there is reasonable evidence of intention, or significant advantage was gained regardless of student intention, it is likely that misconduct occurred. Issues of misconduct should be dealt with by filing an academic incident.

Aiding and abetting is the act of helping another student to commit an Academic Integrity Violation. This can include giving answers to another student, providing a distraction or visual barrier to allow another student to cheat on an assessment, or writing part (or all) of an assessment for another student.

• If a student loaned work to someone else, but there is no intentionality (i.e. the student shared the work intentionally, but did not realize this would be misconduct/intend to cheat), AND it is the student’s first incident, the incident is better filed under “Loaned Work to Someone Else.” 

• If work or answers were taken and used without a student’s knowledge, AND it is the student’s first incident, the incident is better filed under “Did Not Maintain Security of Work.” 

• If the aid was given indirectly through the form of work uploaded to a file sharing website, the incident is better filed under “Facilitated Academic Misconduct.” 

• If a student’s assistance is “contracted” (i.e. compensated for in the form of a trade, a favour, or money), then the incident is better filed under the category of “Contract Cheating.” 

Buying or selling academic work, with money, favours, or trades, is contract cheating. Contract cheating is a serious offence. It is impossible to contract cheat accidentally or with innocent intentions. Therefore, contract cheating must always be filed as an offence, and never as a warning.

Contract cheating cases may be complicated. The evidence can be difficult to collect and interpret, and the cases can have wide-reaching implications for multiple students. If you suspect that the case you are investigating involves contract cheating, we encourage you to contact the Academic Integrity Office. 

Copying from others is submitting work of another student.

What is the difference between citation errors, copying from others, and plagiarism? 

• If there was no intention to deceive and no assessment advantage was gained, the incident should be filed as Citing, Referencing, and Paraphrasing Education, which is not an Academic Integrity Violation. 

• If there was no intention to deceive but the student did gain assessment advantage, it’s Copying From Others. Students who borrow ideas or text from other sources may think of that as just helping each other out, and may not be intending to conceal the original authors, but it is still misconduct.  

• If there is both intention to deceive and assessment advantage, the incident is best filed under Plagiarism. 

Self-copying is the act of resubmitting material from a previous course. This occurs most often when a student is re-taking a course that they have previously failed. There is often no intention to cheat in self-copying cases, and penalties should be calibrated accordingly.

Note: self-copying is only an academic integrity violation if the student does not have faculty permission to re-use work. Resubmission (with or without edits) may sometimes be appropriate, with your permission. Please be aware that resubmitted work may result in a Turnitin Similarity Score as high as 100%. To avoid questions of authorship, ask students for a copy of the old work at the point where you grant permission so that you can compare it to the version that they will submit. 

Copyright infringement includes incidents such as photocopying a significant portion of a library textbook, selling another student a “cracked” DRM-protected eText, or breaking a licensing agreement on academic software.

This is an infrequently used category.

Copyright infringement can only be filed as a warning. If the incident cannot be filed as a warning, the situation might better be dealt with through Student Rights and Responsibilities or through a conversation with students. If copyright infringement is a frequent issue, faculty can consider adopting an OER.

If a student’s work is used/stolen without their knowledge and used to commit misconduct, they did not maintain security of work. This often happens when students lend other students their devices. Either the lender or the borrower may then take advantage of the other. For the student who wrote the original work, this is a minor academic incident (because the student did not intend to cheat or even know that cheating was occurring, and did not themself gain any advantages) and penalties should be selected accordingly.

Note that “Did Not Maintain Security of Work” can only be filed as a warning. If this is not the student’s first incident, the similar category of “aiding and abetting” must be used – but the lack of intentionality should still inform penalty selection. 

Facilitated academic misconduct is the act of uploading and sharing any course materials (e.g., assignment, test, exam), to a third-party website without permission. It also includes uploading one's own assessments to a third-party website, if that work is then taken and submitted by another student for credit.

Students may not understand that the use of these sites (CourseHero, Chegg, etc) can lead to an academic integrity violation if other students use their work inappropriately. As always, use the metric of intentionality to help guide filing decisions and penalty selection. 

If faculty discover work related to their course on a file-sharing website, they can contact the Document Takedown Team at AcademicIntegrityTakedownRequest@conestogac.on.ca to request assistance. For material owned by the faculty or the college, removal on the grounds of copyright will be requested. Current students will be contacted and advised to remove their own materials to avoid future academic integrity violations.

Improper behaviour typically constitutes actions that are not inherently cheating, but which in context can be considered as evidence of intent to cheat. Use this category for misconduct in testing situations that is not covered more specifically by other categories. 

 It is considered improper behaviour if: 

• A student breaks a clearly-communicated rule. This can include a clearly-articulated requirement to leave devices outside of the room, instructions not to speak to any other students in the hall on bathroom breaks, etc.

• A student refuses to follow directions from a faculty, proctor, or exam supervisor. A student may not understand that a behaviour like humming or asking a peer for a pencil might be inappropriate in certain testing situations. If a student is asked to stop and does not, then it becomes misconduct.  

• A student does something which should always be understood to be inappropriate in a testing environment, such as yelling at a faculty member or not letting other students access the testing space.

Actions which are inherently cheating, such as the use of a cheat sheet or being caught exchanging answers with another student, are better filed under the more specific category of “unauthorised aids and assistance.”  

Having another student write an online test on their behalf is better filed under either “contract cheating” (if the writing was done for money, favours, or trade) or “misrepresentation and fraud.” 

This category is for when a student loaned work to someone else, but there was no intention of misconduct (i.e. the student shared the work on purpose but did not realize this would be misconduct). Loaned Work to Someone Else can only be filed as a warning.

• If this is not the student’s first incident, it is better filed under “Aiding and Abetting,” but the student’s intentionality or lack thereof can still be a factor that guides penalty selection. 

For the purpose of clear filing and tracking, please limit use of this category for intentional acts of impersonation, data falsification, or otherwise fraudulent behaviour that is not more specifically addressed under other categories.  This could include: 

• Misrepresenting the reason for requesting an extension on a test or assignment, including altering or falsifying medical documentation. 

• Changing the answers or grades on an assessment after it was returned. 

• Falsely claiming to have completed work that was actually completed by another student in a way not captured by the Plagiarism category, including fraudulently taking credit for work done by other group members or fraudulently accusing another student of academic misconduct. 

• Modifying or inventing data or interview transcripts that the student was expected to collect legitimately. 

• Posing as another student to take an online exam without receiving any form of payment in exchange.

Using fraudulent sources hallucinated by a gen AI tool (i.e., ChatGPT or Co-Pilot) is better dealt with under unauthorized aids and assistance. The student presumably believed the source data was accurate, so they did not intentionally falsify anything - but the student did still commit an academic integrity violation by using a tool they were not permitted to use.

While posing as another student is lying about identity, claiming another student’s work as your own is lying about authorship. Issues of inauthentic authorship can usually be more specifically addressed under plagiarism or contract cheating.

Plagiarism is the act of submitting or presenting work of another person(s)/organization in whole or substantial part as one’s own, without proper citation and referencing. Because plagiarism is a serious academic integrity violation it must always be filed as an offence. There is no option to file it as a warning. 

What is the difference between citation errors, copying from others, and plagiarism? 

• If  there was no intention to deceive and no assessment advantage, the incident should be filed as Citing, Referencing, and Paraphrasing Education, which is not an Academic Integrity Violation. 

• If there was no intention to deceive but the student did gain assessment advantage, it’s copying from others. For example, if a student based their work heavily on work done by a classmate, they might not be intending to pretend they did it on their own, but they still cheated. 

• If there is both intention to deceive and an assessment advantage, the incident is best filed under Plagiarism. 

The Plagiarism Decision Tree can be a useful tool in deciding if the incident was plagiarism.

An unauthorized aid is any tool or device your student was not permitted to use in the completion of their assessment. Generative AI tools are the most common unauthorized aid currently in use, but depending on context this can include paraphrasing tools, translation tools, or even spelling/grammar editors. It is not misconduct to use any tool that a student has permission to use, or that does not undermine the assessment outcomes.  

Unauthorized assistance is taking help from another person when they were supposed to complete the assessment alone. 

• If two students worked together and mutually assisted each other, the incident is better filed for both parties under Unauthorized Collaboration.   

• If the student paid for the assistance they received, the incident is better filed under Contract Cheating. 

Unauthorized Collaboration is submitting work prepared with another person or people, when it should have been prepared independently. Incidents should be filed for all students who worked together.

If one student took an assignment from another student, but they did not mutually assist each other, the incident is better filed under Unauthorized Aids and Assistance. 

Unscholarly behaviour is interfering with the ability of another student to successfully complete academic work. Examples include withholding information from or otherwise excluding classmates in group projects, intentionally not participating in some facet of a group project, or inflating a friend’s grade in a peer-graded assignment.  

In order for it to be an academic incident, the behaviour must either a) be an attempt by the student to gain an unfair academic advantage, or b) unfairly create academic disadvantage for another student or students.

Behaviour that is unprofessional (such as sending badgering emails to faculty) or inappropriate (such as being shirtless in a Zoom class), but does not create academic advantage or disadvantage, is usually a classroom management issue to be dealt with between the faculty member and student. If the situation is more extreme, it would be better dealt with through Student Rights and Responsibilities.