Academic integrity is the commitment to honest, fair, respected, and fair teaching, learning, and research. All members of the University of Waterloo are expected to demonstrate integrity in their work, study, classroom learning, and collaboration.
It is your responsibility to upload academic integrity by producing and presenting your own work, properly acknowledging the contributions of others, and upholding ethical standards in learning, research, and scholarship.
What does Academic Integrity look like at Waterloo?
For students, academic integrity means making ethical decisions, asking questions, and following instructions — even when faced with difficult situations.
There are six core values of integrity that all members of the University must adhere to:
- Trust
- Respect
- Fairness
- Responsibility
- Courage
Things to keep in mind
- It's a learned skill! Academic integrity takes practice.
- AI is a source tool. Be careful about using AI-powered supports for your assignments and studies. It is a tool that requires citing, paraphrasing, or summarizing — you need to understand what you're entering into AI to authenticate its correctness when using it for assignments and assessments.
- Group work has limits. When you are asking friends for help, make sure that it is helpful but not “the answer” — even high-achieving students can find themselves in cheating situations by offering too much help to others.
- Code is like the written word. Code can be written in many different ways, like the English word. It can take many forms, so cheating is easy to detect.
- It's not done with ill-intent. A lot of times, cheating is not intentional but it happens if you are not careful. When in doubt, source your work!
- Knowing is important. If you don't learn what you need to know for one assessment, it'll likely come back to you in a midterm or a final, and be worth more.
- Get help, where needed. You should ask for help along the way, whenever you have questions about integrity.