Academic Integrity at Bow Valley College

Avoiding plagiarism is simple - always properly cite the original source of the ideas and information that you use in an essay or assignment. Most instructors at Bow Valley College require learners use APA style. For help using APA style, go to the library's APA Style Guide, 7th Edition. 

Learning How to Avoid Plagiarism

Originality check! Use this flowchart to help determine if you need to cite a source to avoid plagiarism: 

Turnitin is a tool designed to assist learners and instructors in reducing plagiarism and ensuring academic honesty. Assignments are compared against a large database and a report is created that allows learners to see if their assignment matches, or is similar to, any of the material in the database.

NOTE: Not every instructor will use Turnitin for their assignments. It is important to check with your instructor to see if they will be using it.

  • For questions about how to access your Turnitin "Similarity Report" please contact your instructor. The library is unable to help with this.
  • For help with rewriting or rephrasing your assignment, please contact your program tutor.
  • For general questions about references and citations please contact the library at librarian@bowvalleycollege.ca
  • For help with submitting your assignment to the D2L Brightspace dropbox, please watch the tutorials on Student Support in D2L or contact a Peer Technology Advisor or the Learner Technology Advisor in the RGO Library and Learning Commons.

"The mere copying of texts has no educational value. Moreover, it involves students in moral compromise and deception. Letting plagiarists incorporate parts of external texts into their works is, of course, not fair on the honest students who do not plagiarize" (Kakkonen & Mozgovoy, 2012, p. 1168).