Deakin expects its students to understand and demonstrate the values of honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility. That is, to act with academic integrity.
Academic integrity is about producing and submitting assessments in an honest and fair way, acting and communicating ethically, and showing respect for the work of others.
It’s also important to be aware of contract cheating. Contract cheating is where you ask someone to do all or part of your assignments or exams and pass the work off as your own, including paying for work from a third party. It can happen accidentally when you get help from a company pretending to offer academic help or tutoring services. New government legislation has introduced tough new penalties to prevent contract cheating at Australian universities. Offenders face up to $111,000 fines and possibly two years’ imprisonment. The legislation applies to providers of contract cheating services but may capture students who assist others to cheat, by writing their assignments or exchanging answers on an exam.
It’s a very serious offence to submit work through contract cheating. This process is not accepted at Deakin and can result in exclusion from your course and the University.
To demonstrate academic integrity, it’s important that you:
- always submit your own work, sit your own tests and do your own final assessments (including examinations)
- acknowledge other people’s work in your assignments
- learn how to spot unethical providers
- understand the guidelines for using ChatGPT or other AI tools
- provide accurate and truthful documentation to the University.
All commencing students are required to complete an Academic Integrity module in their first trimester. You will find this module located in your My Learning section of DeakinSync. To learn more about academic integrity and contract cheating, visit our Academic Integrity webpage for information and resources.