Collaboration works for you. Copying works against you.
While collaborating with other students and studying in groups can help you learn from your peers and increase your level of knowledge and understanding of a subject, copying other students' work is cheating and will result in disciplinary action. By copying another student's work, you are compromising the principles of academic integrity, yourself and the institute.
If one student allows another student to copy her homework, are both the students considered to have cheated?
In the event of an academic integrity offense, both the student or students who provided inappropriate assistance and the student or students who received the assistance will be held responsible.
If someone asks me for my homework, it is difficult to refuse to help. What should I do?
Some cultures have a strong tradition of people helping one another. This is a good thing. However, sometimes the “help” can hurt both of the people involved.
Consider this hypothetical situation:
Ali only passes his course because his friend Jwana “helps” him with every assignment. Has Ali learned anything? After graduation, will he call Jwana every time his boss gives him an assignment? Not only does this “help” hurt Ali, but it hurts Jwana as well: she is taking time away from her own studies to do Ali’s work, and she is risking failing the assignment, failing the course, or worse.
How can friends work together without it being considered cheating?
Discussing the lecture, reviewing each other’s notes and visiting the professor together are excellent ways to help your friends study, because all these ways help the students to learn. Copying homework or writing an essay for someone is not, because the student is only getting a grade, not learning.
When does help become cheating?
Cheating is the opposite of learning. If both students are learning, there is probably no cheating happening.
If Karwan asks Muhammed to explain the causes of World War II and they discuss that for ten minutes, they are both learning. This is not cheating.
If Karwan asks Muhammed to write a paragraph for Karwan’s essay on the causes of World War II, is Karwan learning anything? No. This is cheating, not learning.