Group work

2.7 Is it OK to work with a study group?

It's ok to work with a group to study the core concepts of your course, but if an assignment requires you to use your own original ideas and analysis, you shouldn't rely on others to do this work for you and take away the opportunity to develop and demonstrate your own, unique ideas and abilities. The assignments and homework are ways of measuring how much you understood from the material taught in the course.

It also depends on your professor's expectations for the assignment. If she considers it to be an individual assignment text annotation indicator , then it would be academically dishonest to work as a group to complete any part of it. If the academic work assigned is for individual effort, then you should be working on it alone. If group work is allowed, you can work with a study group.

My study group has a lot of questions to complete for our next lab. Can we divide them up and share the answers to hand in?

No, not if the requirement of the assignment is to work on all parts of the assignment as a group; because your professor wants to see you demonstrate how well you can work in a group environment. Also everyone in your group needs to work on every part so they don't miss out on learning the material. Not doing your fair share of work in a group assignment is cheating and if your group does all of the work for someone who is not participating, then you are helping that person cheat.

My friend asked me to let him see my assignment because he says he doesn't really understand what to do. Is it ok to let others see my work?

While there is nothing wrong with helping a friend, letting someone have your work may cause problems for you later. If you email your assignment to your friend, how do you know he won't copy it or parts of it? Sometimes the temptation to cheat is too much for someone who is under stress. You won't know what happens to your assignment after it leaves your hands. If you want to help a friend, meet in person and talk about the assignment, but don't just hand your hard work over to anyone.

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