This scenario is an example of contract cheating, asking an external party or person(s) to complete academic work such as assignments, essays, lab reports, exams and tests on your behalf.

Even though contract cheating is not a recent phenomenon, it has become a serious issue at universities across Canada and the world. Many students do not know that contract cheating is a form of academic misconduct. It is not always clear to students if what is being done counts as contract cheating or not. Many of the companies that pop up on students’ social media accounts look legitimate. These pop ups even assure students that they will only “help” or “tutor” students in their assignments. Students are not always aware of the dangers of contract cheating. And shockingly, more and more of the contract cheating companies have resorted to blackmailing students!

 The situation is further complicated by the increase in popularity of academic file-sharing and “tutoring” websites, such as Chegg, CourseHero and StuDocu. Such websites create platforms where students share their class materials online to gain access to the websites’ vast collections of study aid and sample assignments. Some of these sites also offer 24/7 study help, where students can post questions and get answers from “experts.” Some of these sites are based on a bartering system. Students will gain access to the site’s study material if they upload their own study and lecture notes, class slides, etc. Students should be aware that uploading course material that is not their own is a breach of copyright laws and can lead to serious consequences. Using study notes from these sites to help with assignments may be viewed as contract cheating because the student is using an external party to complete their academic work. Overall, even if a student is not breaking the universities rules, it is best to avoid such sites, as the information might be out of date or misleading.    

Students can fall prey to contract cheating for many reasons, including:

• pressures from family, instructors, advisors or employers to produce high-quality and/or high quantities of work
• a high drive to be perfect and succeed at any cost
• poor time management
• lack of confidence in writing or research skills

Contract cheating suppliers are aware of these vulnerabilities and will often promote their services to individuals under pressure.

Being aware of the factors that can lead to making poor decisions is an important first step for students to avoid academic misconduct. The university provides excellent services to all students free of charge, such as the one-to-one tutoring services in content, study skills and writing offered by the Academic Learning Centre. Visit our Student Success Month calendar of events and follow @UMStudent on Instagram for information about all the workshops on offer throughout October and beyond.

October 19, 2022 is the International Day of Action Against Contract Cheating. There will be a booth at the Dafoe Library from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., where you can learn more about contract cheating and academic integrity. There will be giveaways, prizes and fun games.

October is Academic Integrity Month! Visit our website for more information on events, and follow us on Twitter. 

As a first year student there is so much to learn and get used to in the first couple of weeks: Where do I study? Are my courses right for me? What job can I get with this degree?

In addition to these common questions, students have to get used to how university operates. Professors may speak fast during the lecture and by mid-class your hand is probably getting sore from taking notes. Then, there is the work you have to do when you get home: review your notes, do the reading for next class and finish reports. How can one manage all these tasks?

Time management is essential for academic success. Unfortunately, I did not have this skill in my first year of studies. Some students may find themselves forgetting about deadlines, rushing to complete assignments without putting their best work forward, creating unrealistic study schedules, or procrastinating.

This is why the first few weeks are extremely important, especially for first year students, as you set the foundation for your study habits.

Here are some tips to help you develop strong time management skills and prevent poor choices that could lead to academic misconduct:

1. Start early. Speak with your professors, ask questions and clarify expectations for the course and for your assignments. Knowing what is expected of you will help you stay on track and manage your time effectively.
2. Develop a realistic study schedule. To do this, you need to identify your goals. You’ve allocated three hours to study in the library, but have you made a list of what you want to accomplish? Being specific will help you maximize your time and accomplish your tasks. Also, make sure to take breaks during your study sessions. You deserve it!
3. Prioritize your assignments. Check your syllabus often to make sure you note the due dates and weight for each assignment. A 5% reflection paper might be due first, but you can’t forget about your 20% essay due the following week. Knowing how much each assignment is worth is going to put things into perspective and help identify what you need to tackle first.
4. Ask for help. The University has an immense network of support to help students through their personal and academic difficulties. A great starting point is speaking with professors. They have designated office hours to meet with students to discuss course content and assignments, as well as make suggestions and referrals for areas in which you may be struggling. This could be a great opportunity to get to know your professor and get connected with campus resources such as Academic Advisors, Academic Learning Centre, Writing Tutor Program, Career Services and Student Counselling Centre.

Lastly, remember that your academic advisors are here to support you through your transition to university. As academic advisors, we often speak to students about academic success and student responsibilities and we recognize how stressful and overwhelming the first year can be.

The First Year Centre is dedicated to supporting students in clarifying their goals and making informed decisions to reach these goals. Stop by our office at 205 Tier to speak with an academic advisor, check in on your progress and ask for help if you are struggling.

Yelena Metrik is an academic advisor with University 1 First Year Centre.

October is Academic Integrity Month! Visit our website for more information on events, and follow us on Twitter. 

Academic integrity can be defined as the practice of maintaining an honest ethic in our academic and work practices as scholars. In my conversations with peers, I have gathered that when most people think of academic integrity, they think of plagiarism. But does it end there?

Professor Charron, a professor in the Political Studies department, says: “Academic integrity is a habit you need.” If academic integrity is a habit, then anyone can develop and excel at it.

My first introduction to academic integrity was in high school in Zambia, where there is a strict emphasis on the repercussions of academic misconduct.

I would describe my introduction to academic integrity at the University of Manitoba as the submerged part of an iceberg. I heard many terms such as academic dishonesty, academic fraud, and duplicate submission. But what does this all mean? I began to think about how I could avoid finding myself in any of these situations.

For example, have you ever found yourself in a situation where you are given plenty of time to complete a task, but in the midst of life’s demands you realize time has flown by and the due date is around the corner?

I have found myself in that situation and so many others have too. Here are three tips I have found helpful:

1) Start assignments on time. If you begin working on your assignments on time you can spare yourself the panic of trying to get a month-long task done within a couple of days. In starting early, you can do the assignment in sections, get enough time to read and reread, and make crucial changes. Also, this can prevent resorting to duplicate submission (submitting the same assignment more than once) or inappropriate collaboration (working with others on an assignment intended to be independent).

2) Thoroughly read through course material. This will save you from having to rush through writing a paper or doing last minute research. It helps you write with ease and ensures that your ideas are coherent. Furthermore, when you spend time researching through analyzing the relevant sources for an assignment, it is unlikely you will end up forgetting to give credit to another author’s ideas.

3) When in doubt. ask questions. Sometimes we like to convince ourselves we don’t need help, but asking for help is not a sign of weakness. Instead, it is a sign that you are willing to learn and do your best. Our professors want to help us to excel, so when in doubt, ask them about course expectations and assignments. The Libraries and Academic Learning Centre are other great places to ask questions outside the classroom. Asking the right people helps us maintain honesty and know our responsibilities.

Just remember: Time is everything; read thoroughly; ask always. Academic integrity is a reflection of your personal values with regards to your work.

Chishimba Ngulube is a political studies student at the University of Manitoba. She also serves as an Academic Integrity Ambassador and student leader. 

October is Academic Integrity Month. To learn more about the events and activities happening on campus, visit the Academic Integrity website.

October is Academic Integrity Month! Visit our website for more information on events, and follow us on Twitter. 

It can be a challenge to get students interested in talking about academic integrity, to say the least.

In many cases, this is because students don’t believe they need to talk about it—they’re not planning to cheat, after all.

I don’t see it that way.

In the ten years I’ve worked as a student advocate, I’ve met with many students who have been accused of some form of academic misconduct including plagiarism, cheating on a test or exam, or on a take-home assignment. What I see in those meetings are students who are stressed, anxious and even angry about being accused of acting dishonestly in their academic work. It’s not a pleasant experience to go through.

You may ask: Why did they cheat in the first place?

One answer would very likely be, “I didn’t know I was cheating!” While that may sound odd, it’s actually a very common scenario.

“I thought that my citations were done right. That’s the way I did it before and my teachers never said it was wrong.”

“I was working on my essay at the last minute and accidentally printed out the rough draft and not the final version.”

“I was using study notes to review on the bus on the way to the university. I was so distracted and nervous going into the exam room, I didn’t realize that the notes were still in my pocket during the exam.”

“My friend was struggling on the assignment and it was due the next day. I showed her my assignment to give her a point in the right direction. I wasn’t cheating, just helping out a friend.”

These are all real situations I’ve heard from students.

These aren’t students who intentionally go into an exam planning to cheat by copying answers off their neighbour or sneaking material into the exam to help them answer questions. These aren’t students who find the “perfect” essay on the internet, download it and submit it as their own paper. Although these situations do happen, they’re not typical of the majority of students who are investigated for academic misconduct. In many cases, students simply don’t realize what they’re doing is wrong. This is why academic integrity is something that everyone–faculty, staff and students—needs to talk about.

October is Academic Integrity Month. There are a variety of activities, workshops and events designed to get everyone thinking about how we can build the skills and knowledge to succeed with integrity both in and outside of the classroom.

For more information on events, visit the Academic Integrity Month website.

Follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook and join the conversation using #umintegrity.

Heather Morris is the Acting Director of the Student Advocacy office. 

Academic Integrity Month is an initiative of the university-wide Academic Integrity Advisory Committee (AIAC), which oversees academic staff and student-focused educational initiatives.

“The literature shows that it’s important for universities to create an institutional culture that promotes academic integrity,” says Brandy Usick, co-chair of the AIAC and executive director of Student Engagement and Success. “Academic Integrity Month is a way for the U of M community to learn more about academic integrity and why it matters to them.”

This year’s academic integrity-themed events include activities on both campuses for undergraduate and graduate students, academic staff and instructors, researchers and administrators.

There are many reasons to attend these events, including tips to becoming a better writer and researcher, learning to create better bibliographies, engaging in important conversations around academic integrity, and being connected to the supports and resources on campus to help you succeed.

The Academic Integrity Ambassadors, who are volunteer undergraduate student leaders from across campus, will also be engaging students in conversations about why academic integrity is important inside and outside the classroom.

This year’s events are hosted by the Libraries, Academic Learning Centre, International Centre, Student Advocacy and the Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, with support from University of Manitoba Students’ Unionand University of Manitoba Graduate Students’ Association.

Learn more about Academic Integrity Month on Twitter and Facebook and join the conversation using #umintegrity.

October is Academic Integrity Month! Visit our website for more information on events, and follow us on Twitter. 

Ask a native English speaker to rewrite something in her own words, and she’ll use a familiar bag of tricks – the English language. Ask a non-native English speaker to rewrite something in her own words and she’ll use a familiar bag of tricks – her first language – not English.

One can see how this might complicate things.

To paraphrase in another language, multilingual writers may need to take several additional steps that can be time and resource intensive. Finding the right vocabulary, building the right sentence structure, embedding the paraphrase in the existing text and writing with rhetorical confidence in general can make paraphrasing daunting and aggravating. The time commitment and perceived difficulty paraphrasing many sources for a research paper can easily lead English as an additional language (EAL) writers to compromise their academic integrity by copying or patch paraphrasing sources.

There are two main challenges when it comes to paraphrasing:

First, one must fully and correctly capture what the original writer intended. In order to do this, the reader needs to reach a clear understanding of what the original text means. The good news is that once the text’s meaning has been thoroughly scrutinized, the reader comes away a more enlightened scholar. And isn’t that what it’s all about?

After overcoming the initial challenge of clearly understanding the foreign academic language and academic concepts of the original writer’s work, the second challenge is writing the paraphrase. Here the writer will need all of her linguistic tools to recraft the original text.  The words must be changed to simpler, or in some cases, more complex terms, and they must be recast in a completely different sentence structure. To perform this trick of linguistic sorcery, a non-native English speaker must be able to access a large lexicon and have a variety of grammatical tricks up her sleeve. The writer will need to pick and choose the best words and manipulate English grammar and sentence patterns with the finesse and confidence expected of a native English speaking university-level writer.

This is the part that seems most daunting and counterintuitive to many non-native speakers. After all, how can someone who is still learning the language write the text in a better way than the native English speaker? The text is already written in perfect English!

And, why rewrite at all, when copying the text seems most respectful of the original writer’s idea? Unfortunately, as many non-native speakers already know, culture and in this case, academic culture, is not always intuitive, to say the least.

Paraphrasing is a multilayered, bitter tasting slice of academic pie, but…. it is NOT completely unpalatable. Like all academic literacy skills, paraphrasing gets easier with practice and as you gain more control over the English language.

Here are some suggestions for making this task less daunting.

1. Find and underline the main ideas of the text you need to paraphrase.
2. Use your dictionary or other tools to understand the vocabulary and meaning of each idea.
3. Underline any technical words and proper nouns. It’s OK to use these.
4. Put away the text and then rewrite it from memory. If you need to use words from your first language to keep the gist of the ideas, do so.
5. Compare the original with your version. At this point your paraphrase may still follow the same sentence structure as the original and you may still be using some of the same words.
6. To break free from the original structure you can use several strategies. It is important to use more than one of these strategies:
7. Reorder the main ideas
8. Choose a different member of the word family
9. Change the sentence type
10. Change the connectors and the logical relationship between the main ideas
11. Add a signal word to introduce the paraphrase
12. Tidy up the grammar and the vocabulary use.
13. Compare this second version to the original to make sure you have kept the original meaning.
14. Add the appropriate in-text citation according to your discipline’s style guide.
15. If your paraphrase meets the following guidelines you have a good paraphrase:
16. The meaning is the same as the original
17. The only words that are the same are the technical and proper nouns
18. The sentence pattern is completely different
19. There are enough cues to tell the reader that this section of the text is not originally yours

Visit the Academic Learning Center website to book an appointment with one of our writing tutors attend a paraphrasing workshop, or check out our online resources for multilingual writers. If you feel you need language support for paraphrasing, make an appointment with the ALC English as an Additional Language Specialist Instructor.

Antoanela Denchuk is an EAL specialist and instructor with the Academic Learning Centre. 

October is Academic Integrity Month! Visit our website for more information on events, and follow us on Twitter. 

Do you love typing and formatting reference lists? Do want to spend all of your time collecting, organizing, and tracking down your references? Of course not, life is too short!

Reference management tools can free you from that drudgery.

With reference managers, you can:

• Import references from databases and websites
• Store PDF files
• Organize references in folders
• Share folders for group work
• Automatically generate reference lists and bibliographies in a variety of reference styles (e.g. APA, MLA, IEEE, Chicago, AMA, etc.)
• Retrieve information used in your work

But that’s not all!

Reference managers can be:

• Cloud based
• Mobile
• Platform independent
• Free, but additional features may cost extra
• Integrated into word processors (e.g. MS Word, Pages)

Things to think about when selecting a reference manager:

• Your technology (desktop, laptop, mobile devices)
• Technological skill level
• Discipline preferences for reference management and reference style (APA, etc.)
• Group work and sharing needs
• Operating systems
• Export file formats
• Import file formats
• Database and website connectivity

The most widely used reference managers at the U of M are:

• Mendeley
• EndNote
• Zotero
• Refworks (subscription expires on December 31, 2017)

Your Subject Librarian can help you decide on the right reference management tool for your needs.

You can also attend one of many reference management workshops offered by the Libraries during Academic Integrity Month and throughout the year.

Katherine Penner is Acting Section Head of the Eckhardt-Gramatté Music Library and Bill Poluha is Associate Librarian of the Sciences & Technology Library.

This same student contacted me again on several occasions with questions that arose in other classes. Our interactions were fairly brief and usually over email, but over time I’ve witnessed a noticeable change in the student’s work and citing/referencing skills.

One thing that stood out to me about this student was that they were never afraid to ask “why”.

By taking the time to reach out and ask questions, not only did the student learn the necessary standards for citing/referencing, but more importantly, they understood the reasoning behind these actions and the application of these techniques.

This is part of a learning process that unfolds over time.

Research can involve many different questions, so it’s not uncommon for a librarian to be contacted by the same student multiple times during a term, a year, or over several years.

Contacting the library in this way can help students become more comfortable working with different types of information.  Librarians have a wealth of knowledge about researching and the steps that follow, and while it may be intimidating to approach a librarian, a librarian can help you develop skills that you can carry with you throughout your university career and beyond.

Citing sources and ensuring integrity in your work may also lead to questions about how you are using a particular source (i.e. are you modifying an image, or using it as is?) and for what purpose (i.e. commercial, educational?).  Other times, integrity relates to topics such as evaluating different research sources, or guidelines to follow when publishing your own work (i.e. the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications).

While all of this can seem overwhelming, you don’t have to deal with these issues alone! The Libraries provide a safe place for you to ask questions about information use, and are here to help you feel confident in completing assignments and disseminating your research.

In fact, librarians are already familiar with many of the scholarly and non-scholarly sources you’ll encounter. For example, your subject librarian may know the common citation style used in a certain course or where students often need help on a particular research paper.  They know when a source requires attribution, and how to do this in an appropriate way.

As a student, you have the privilege of accessing a wide range of information – articles, journals, books, etc. You also have the responsibility to use these materials in an ethical way.  Through the resources we select, the training sessions we offer, and the research questions we answer, librarians are committed to promoting practices that encourage and help you to act with academic integrity.

To connect with someone in the Libraries you can:

• Go to any library service desk in-person with quick questions
• Use our online chat reference service (“Ask Us”) if you’re working remotely
• Book an appointment with your subject librarian.

We also encourage you to check out the numerous events and resources available to you as part of academic integrity month.

Take time to visit the Libraries with your questions – and often. Helping you through the research process is an important part of librarians’ work and we are here to assist you as you strive to act with integrity in all you do at the University.