Academic integrity

Understand what academic integrity is, how to uphold it and what could happen if you breach the University standards.

Academic integrity is about being honest in your studies. It means doing your own work and referencing when you use another person's words or ideas. Why is it important? Because it ensures honesty, fairness and respect in learning and research. If you cheat or copy work without acknowledging it, the consequences can be serious – you could even be excluded from your course.

Your responsibilities

When you enrol, you agree to uphold academic integrity and consent to having your work checked for plagiarism, collusion and other forms of cheating. You must be honest and ethical in your submissions, which means using your own words and acknowledging the work of others.

Academic integrity tips

Be clear about assignment instructions and guidelines.

Acknowledge sources of ideas and material.

Learn to paraphrase and summarise effectively.

Establish a routine and allow enough time to produce good work.

Avoid last-minute stress that may lead to risky choices.

Understand what counts as plagiarism.

Acknowledge sources with references

Check your work with Turnitin

Use Turnitin to check your work against online sources and other submissions before you submit. You and your lecturer can use the similarity report to review your work and help demonstrate academic integrity.

For your first submission, the similarity report is usually available within a few minutes. If you resubmit your work, a new report may take up to 24 hours to generate. You can still resubmit during this time, but each new submission restarts the 24-hour waiting period.

Academic Integrity Module

You must complete the Academic Integrity Module before you can submit your first assignment. This self-paced Moodle course contains basic info about paraphrasing, referencing and plagiarism.

Start the module

Have you breached academic integrity?

If you've received an academic misconduct letter, it means you may have breached academic integrity standards. Learn about academic misconduct and follow these steps.

Do you teach at Federation?

You can access learning and teaching resources designed to help you promote academic integrity in your classes and manage academic misconduct.