10 Misrepresentation: Collusion

Collusion

You collude when you submit shared work as individual work. Collusion includes:

  • working on individual assignments with a classmate
  • discussing online quizzes and exams with others
  • sharing computer code that is intended to be individually written
  • receiving unauthorized help from a tutor or other person to complete assignments
  • in group projects, misrepresenting the individual contributions of the group members

Contract Cheating and collusion both defeat the purpose of the assignment. An assignment helps instructors evaluate your understanding, so if you don’t do your own work, your instructor cannot give a fair evaluation nor an accurate grade. By not doing the work yourself, you are also putting yourself in an unfair advantage over your fellow students who put in the effort and did their own work. Lastly, it makes your own education less effective as you will not improve your skills, and it devalues your credentials.

 

Collaboration versus Collusion – what is the difference?

 

Group of people working together

Source: (javi_indy, n.d.).

 

Collusion = working together with others although explicitly being told to work individually. This is not acceptable and an academic integrity violation.

Collaboration = working together on an assignment as a group as explicitly permitted or required by your instructor. This is acceptable.

Important: In group work, you must clearly indicate what is the group’s work and what are your own individual contributions.

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Academic Integrity at East Central University Copyright © 2020 by Vivian Eldridge and Shawna Bishop is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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