Academic Integrity Fundamentals Tutorial

Misrepresentation occurs when students falsify information related to their identity or academic performance.

Misrepresentation is academic misconduct. Consequences include:

• Failing your assignment​
• Failing your course​
• Being suspended from RDP
• Being expelled from RDP
• And not being accepted at another college or university after being expelled

adapted from Assiniboine Community College (with permission)

Misrepresentation includes:

• Having someone else write your exam or go to class for you
• Being a substitute for someone else for an exam or in class
• Altering or falsifying academic records (such as transcripts)
• Altering or falsifying medical documents (such as a doctor's note)

adapted from Assiniboine Community College (with permission)

Your instructor hands back marked exams, and tells the class to carefully check the grading, in case an exam has been graded unfairly. You realize you answered a question wrong, even though you knew the correct answer. You scribble in the correct answer and resubmit the paper. This is an example of academic misconduct.

Tests submitted for re-grading may not be altered in any way, even if you did know the correct answer at the time of the exam.

adapted from SFU (CC BY-NC 4.0)

An example of misrepresentation would be to have a friend sign in and complete your coursework (e.g. register your attendance in a class or discussion forum, complete an online quiz, or impersonate you in an exam).

If a friend is going through a hard time and asks you to help out by impersonating them, you are putting both your friend and yourself at risk. Fraud and misrepresentation are the most egregious forms of academic misconduct and will likely carry the most serious of academic penalties.

adapted from SFU (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Graphic by Sara LeBlanc, University of Waterloo (CC BY-NC 4.0)