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Understanding Academic Integrity

Scenario 3: Using Course Sharing Sites

TRANSCRIPT: You are looking through the notes you've taken for one of your courses. You notice they aren't very detailed and are struggling to understand the material for an upcoming assignment. You reach out to a friend to see if they know of any resources that can help you. Your friend responds by saying they have found old lecture notes on a website called "Course Star”. They also tell you that if you upload your old course notes, you get free access to the website.

You know that using this website to share and access someone else's notes doesn't demonstrate academic integrity, but you want to get a good mark on the assignment since it's worth 40% of your final grade. Besides, you aren't directly copying the assignment, and the website is free. With this in mind, you agree to use the site.

You are unsure if you are going to be violating the academic integrity policy because the professor already posted all of the course material on SLATE. You think helping other students access them is demonstrating values of academic integrity. Two weeks later, you received notice your professor found that you put their materials on "Course Star”, and you've gotten a breach notification.

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