Academic Integrity

Getting Caught

The consequences of getting caught are quite serious and it is your responsibility as a university student to know the rules that govern academic integrity here at Ryerson. If you play a sport you know the rules before you get in the game. If you drive a car, you learn the rules of the road before you get your license. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that “pleading ignorance after the fact” will exempt you from the consequences. As a Ryerson student, it is your responsibility to familiarize yourself with the university’s Student Code of Academic Conduct and to abide by it.

The following is taken directly from the Student Code of Academic Conduct. You should read the whole thing.

PENALTIES FOR ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT

What this means

If developing your academic skills and being an upstanding member of your academic community aren’t good enough reasons to avoid plagiarism and cheating, here’s another one: if you plagiarize or cheat, you probably will get caught, and as you can see above, getting caught has major consequences that will put your educational goals in jeopardy.

As far as cheating goes, Professors and T.A.’s know a number of techniques for catching people who cheat, so your chance of being caught is high. And don’t forget that your professors and T.A.’s have access to the same resources that you do: if you found a site on the Internet and copied some of into your paper, the person marking your paper can find that same site by simply typing in a phrase from your paper.

In addition, Ryerson University use powerful plagiarism detection software called Turnitin.com. If you are in a course that uses Turnitin.com, you should educate yourself about what the software is and what it does. This software cross-references your paper against a database of hundreds of thousands of manuscripts, including student papers, Internet sources, and online books and journals. If your paper is submitted through Turnitin.com, your professor will receive a report that tracks similarities between your paper and those on the Turnitin.com database. The papers found on Turnitin.com include the work of other students here at Ryerson.