 Academic dishonesty can take many forms, and I'm going to go over a few examples, but please realize that this list is not complete. Examples of cheating on an exam might include using unauthorized materials such as crib notes or electronic aids, copying from another student either with or without their cooperation, taking more time than is allowed by the instructor, and by that I mean if the instructor says pencil is down in the test, you need to immediately put your pencil down and stop working on the exam. A further example might be if you were particularly good at a particular subject agreeing to take an exam for another student. All of these things are bad. Cheating on homework can include copying work from other students without doing it yourself or allowing students to copy your work and them not doing the work themselves. Falsification of information is also a serious offense. This might include making up data in a lab exercise. It might mean making false statements of fact as if you knew something was true, but you had really made it up. Or it might be just making improper citations about the information, but the citations are either fabricated or misleading. So the dictionary definition of plagiarism is active using another person's words or ideas and presenting them as your own. To avoid plagiarism, you want to make sure that you properly cite references and that if you do make direct quotes that you encase them in quotation marks and cite them as well. You does have an online facility to assist you with these questions and not only about avoiding plagiarism, but as well as just writing skills in general. That link to that site is on the screen. Collaboration can be a sticky issue on assignments and projects. You need to make sure that you discuss this with your instructor if you have any uncertainty about what to do. In many cases, collaboration is encouraged, such as in team projects or study groups. Other cases the instructor will want you to have conducted all the work individually by yourself without any outside help. It is important for you to make sure you understand what the expectations are.