Start early and manage your time

Often, plagiarism and other problems of academic honesty happen when students have not managed their time properly and need to finish an assignment in a hurry. To avoid this situation, you should start to work on your assignment early and make a good plan of time management.

Clarify expectations with your teachers

Different disciplines and courses have different requirements and expectations about the way you report your work, including the way that you cite and reference the prior work of others. You need to consult your teachers about the requirements If you’re not sure what the expectations are

Use a citation tools of library

The online database of libraries may allow you to get references and documents, organize your citations and create a reference list effectively. You may attend the workshop organized by the library to learn how to use different tools such as RefWorks and ProQuest.

Get a citation guide and refer to it

There are different conventions of citation and referencing for in-text citations and entries in the reference list. You should first ask your teacher which styles they want you to use and obtain a citation guide when you are writing your assignments. You may find a lot of online materials summarizing the most common citation styles including APA, MLA, and Harvard styles.

Avoid inappropriate collaboration

If you have been asked to do an individual assignment, then your teacher’s expectation is that you have done the work yourself. In these cases, make sure that the work that you hand in really is your own, and be careful about the extent of help that you give and receive. To avoid problems, don’t provide someone else with a “reference” copy of your work.

Make sure your groupmates understand the principles of academic honesty

As some courses with different types of group assignments such as group project, where the whole group jointly takes responsibility for an assignment. You need to ensure the groupmates understand and follow the same principles of academic honesty. For group submissions, students are strongly encouraged to identify the portions of the assignment for which they are responsible. In the absence of this identification, all students will be held responsible for violations of academic integrity in the group submission.

Learn more about academic honesty

These tips are just a beginning. You can learn more about academic honesty and related skills at HKSYU in different ways, such as:

• Read the policy and guidelines of Plagiarism and Academic Misconduct of HKSYU
• Participate in the workshops related to citation tools organized by the HKSYU Library

Ignorance is no excuse.

The aim of these webpages is to provide you detail information about plagiarism and academic honesty and make you aware of the basic expectations. By using the veriguide and signing your declaration for the assignment, you agree that you understand standards of academic honesty and will be bound by them.