Assistance with coursework for taught students
The Academic Integrity and Assistance Policy explains what you must do to maintain academic integrity and use assistance responsibly.
You are responsible for making sure the work you submit has academic integrity and reflects your own learning, understanding and skills. This includes how you draft, develop and check your work, including any content you create, revise, edit or proofread.
What counts as assistance
Assistance means getting support with your coursework before you submit it for marking. Unless your assessment brief states otherwise, you can use assistance as explained on this page to prepare coursework. Your assessment brief will set out any restrictions or conditions that apply to your coursework. If you are unsure what is allowed for a particular assignment, ask your module leader.
If you use assistance to help develop your own work, the work you submit must still be yours. Make sure you understand what any support or tool can and cannot do, and always check suggestions carefully before using them.
Assistance you can use
Peer assistance
Peer assistance means feedback from other students on your coursework. You may use peer assistance to help prepare your work. Peers can advise on the content, logic and clarity of your work, but they must not write, edit or amend it for you.
Informal assistance
Informal assistance means feedback from friends or family on your coursework. You may use informal assistance to help prepare your work. Friends and family can comment from a general audience perspective, but they must not write, edit or amend the work for you.
Technologies
Technologies are digital tools, including generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and translation aids, whether paid, free or provided by the University. You may use technologies to prepare coursework unless the assessment brief says otherwise.
Proofreading
Proofreading means systematically checking text for errors in spelling, punctuation, grammar, sentence construction, formatting and layout. You may use peer assistance, informal assistance and technologies, including paid-for generative artificial intelligence, for proofreading support, but you must not use paid services.
Assistance you must not use
Paid services
Contract cheating services
Contract cheating services are companies that offer to complete work for students, for example, essay mills. They are illegal in the UK and you must not use them.
Ignore claims from essay sites and proofreading services that the University approves of their use. Never contact these sites or services.
If you come across one of these services, or if one contacts you directly, report it:
Someone else doing your work for you
You must not allow someone else to do your work for you. Another person must not:
- complete an entire piece of work for you
- write or draft any part of your work
- edit, rewrite or amend your work.
Working with others on individual assessments (collusion)
You must not work with others on an assessment that is intended to be completed independently.
Working with others is an important part of academic life. However, it can raise integrity issues if it prevents markers from assessing your individual efforts and understanding.
While peer assistance is permitted, if asking peers for feedback on the content, logic or clarity of your work, they can only tell you what they think, they must not tell you what to write. The work you submit must remain entirely your own.
To avoid problems with collusion:
- Make sure you are clear about which tasks are group tasks and which are individual. Ask your module leader if you are unsure.
- If you discuss an assessment with classmates, do not share or collaborate on specific answers or assessment strategies.
- You must make your own decisions about any feedback you receive on your work and make any changes yourself.
- Other students must not write any part of your work, suggest wording for you to use, rewrite sections, edit your text, provide model answers or contribute content that becomes part of your submission. Equally, you must not do these things for another student.
- Your final submission must reflect your own understanding, ideas and expression, written in your own words.
Referencing and acknowledgements
You must reference any external ideas, information, data or wording used in your work, following the appropriate referencing style, and acknowledge any assistance you have used.
You may be asked to show that the work is your own. This could include sharing earlier drafts or evidence of any assistance you used, such as document version history, tracked changes or GenAI prompts and outputs.
If you are struggling with your work
If you are struggling with your work for any reason, seek support from your programme leader or module leader and your academic personal tutor.
What happens if you break these rules
By allowing someone else to do your work, you deliberately mislead markers about your ability and knowledge. Using assistance that is not allowed or using assistance in a way that is not allowed is a breach of academic integrity and could result in permanent exclusion from the University.
For more information, see the Academic Misconduct Procedure.
Declarations of academic integrity
When you submit an assessment, you are declaring to the University that your work is your own.
You also confirm that you have read and understood the University’s definition of academic integrity and the University’s rules on academic misconduct.
For more information about the University’s expectations of working with academic integrity and the support available to you, see the Library’s information on academic integrity.
The previous traffic light system for GenAI use
The Academic Integrity and Assistance Policy, published in July 2026, replaces the University’s traffic light system for GenAI use in assessments.
You may still see references to the traffic light system during the transition, for example if you are completing resits or an assessment set before the policy changed. Where it was used, the GenAI category appeared in the assessment brief and meant the following:
- RED category: GenAI cannot be used.
- AMBER category: GenAI can be used in an assistive role.
- GREEN category: GenAI has an integral role and should be used as part of the assessment.
If your assessment brief refers to a traffic light category and you are not sure whether it still applies, ask your module leader.