The consequences of academic misconduct can be substantial and negatively affect your career and reputation.
Academic misconduct is behaviour that:
- Misrepresents academic understanding, learning or achievement,
- Undermines the core values of academic integrity, or
- Fails to comply with Bond University's policies and procedures governing student conduct in assessments and exams.
It includes cheating, plagiarism, collusion, ghost writing, and other dishonest actions. Academic misconduct is not tolerated at Bond University and it must be avoided. Failure to do so may seriously affect your academic record, career, and reputation well into the future.
Common types of academic misconduct
As a student, it’s your responsibility to understand and avoid academic misconduct. Below some common examples of academic misconduct are explained. If you're found to have engaged in academic misconduct, you may receive a warning, a reduced mark, a fail grade for the assessment piece or subject, or (in serious and/or repeated cases) even be suspended or expelled from the University.
Refer to Schedule A of the Student Code of Conduct for more detailed information about what constitutes academic misconduct.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism happens when you use someone else’s ideas, words, or creative work without giving credit. Whether it’s accidental or deliberate, it’s still plagiarism.
This includes content from:
- Published or unpublished sources
- Print or digital media
- Music, images, designs, photos, sounds, or code
- Group work or shared ideas. Even paraphrasing without referencing is plagiarism.
Collusion
Collusion is unauthorised collaboration between two or more students. If student A asks student B for help with an assessment or in an exam, where this falls outside of what's permitted for the assessment (*eg in a group assessment, working together on aspects of the assessment is typically permissible, while this is ordinarily completed prohibited during an exam) or if student A shares their work with student B, the students would have colluded. Where a student uses another student's work to complete their assessment, collusion overlaps with plagiarism. It is important to understand that if you help someone cheat or plagiarise, you may face the same penalties as the person who submitted the work.
Contract cheating and ghost writing
Contract cheating is when someone else—like a tutoring service, website, friend, or family member—helps you complete any part of your academic work.
You’ve engaged in contract cheating if you:
- Buy, sell, or swap assignments or answers online
- Pay a private tutoring company to coach you on how to complete an assignment
- Submit notes or sample answers from a private tutor or tutoring service
- Ask someone else to write part or all of your assignment or academic work
- Purchase a completed assignment from a tutoring or online company
- Sit an exam or assessment for someone else or get someone to sit one for you
Misrepresentation and fabrication
Misrepresentation includes fabricating or misquoting information—like making up references, citations, or results—to support your work.
Cheating in exams and assessments
Bringing unauthorised materials (notes, devices, etc.) into an exam—even if you don’t use them—is cheating. For take-home or online exams, getting help from someone else - for any part of the assessment - is also cheating.
Inappropriate use of artificial intelligence
Bond's Artificial Intelligence (AI) Framework provides for three levels of AI Use. Where AI is prohibited in an assessment or exam, relying on it or using it to assist you to complete the assessment or exam constitutes misconduct. Fabrication of information with the use of AI also constitutes misconduct.