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Academic Integrity

Expectations around original work, assessments, assignments and collaboration.

Last updated on October 25, 2026.

Work you hand in on ACADA must be your own, and what instructors teach must be honest and sourced. Students may use AI unless an instructor says otherwise, and must say when it wrote a substantial part. Instructors cite where their facts come from and fix confirmed errors within 14 days. Anyone taking a course can correct a mistake in a lesson, and the instructor approves or declines it. A certificate records that you completed a course; one earned by cheating is withdrawn.

This summary is for orientation only. The sections below are the operative terms.

1. Who this applies to

This policy applies to everyone who learns or teaches on acada.ac: to what students hand in, post and show on their portfolios, and to what instructors and collaborators publish in courses and articles. ACADA L.L.C., a Tennessee limited liability company (ACADA, we), sets these rules and enforces them.

2. What we expect

Do the work yourself, say what helped you, and tell the truth about where things come from. That applies to a student's assignment and to an instructor's lesson in the same way.

3. Your work as a student

  • Hand in your own work. An assignment submission must be yours. Other students in the course can see your submissions, and you can see theirs; that is for learning from each other, not copying. Handing in someone else's submission, a copy of it, or work bought from someone else is cheating.
  • Collaborate when the assignment allows it. If the instructor says a task may be done in a group, say who you worked with. If it does not say, the work is individual.
  • Study groups and notes are yours. Discussing lessons in a room, sharing your own notes and highlights, and explaining things to each other are all fine.
  • Do not pay someone to do it. Buying an assignment, hiring someone to take a quiz, or having someone else complete a course on your account is cheating, and the account rule in the Account & Identity Policy applies too.
  • Your portfolio shows your work. Anything you pin to your portfolio must be yours. Presenting someone else's work as your own there is treated as impersonation under the Community Guidelines.

4. Using AI as a student

You may use AI tools for assignments unless the instructor says otherwise in the assignment instructions. Where AI wrote a substantial part of what you hand in, say so in the submission and say what it did. Using AI to understand a topic, check your work or fix your grammar needs no note. An instructor who forbids AI for a task, or for a whole course, may ask you to redo a submission that used it, or report it to us.

5. Quizzes and answers

You can retake a quiz as often as you like, and every attempt is recorded. Do not post quiz answers, answer keys or assignment solutions in rooms, threads, messages, reviews or anywhere else on ACADA. Sharing your own reasoning about a question is fine; sharing the answer sheet is not.

6. Honesty and sources for instructors

  • Cite your sources. Facts, statistics, quotations, figures, code and images that are not your own should say where they come from. Every lesson has a Sources list for this, shown to students at the end of the lesson, and key terms carry a source link. The list is optional to fill in; the claims in a lesson are not optional to support.
  • Do not invent. No made-up sources, statistics, quotes, results or credentials. Present opinion as opinion, and say when something is contested.
  • Teach your own material. What counts as your own work, and how licensed material may be used, is set out in section 5 of the Course Content Policy. AI-generated material must be disclosed as the AI Content Policy describes.
  • Keep answer keys right. A quiz whose marked answer is wrong is an error like any other, and section 7 applies to it.

7. Corrections

Anyone taking a course can select text in a lesson, press Correct, and say what it should read, why, and where that comes from. Other students in the course see the passage underlined and can agree or disagree with the correction. The instructor and the collaborators who can edit the lesson decide. Approve rewrites the passage in the lesson, and the earlier text stays in the lesson's version history. Decline leaves the lesson as it was, with a note if they write one. Either way the underline comes off and the student who sent it is told.

A confirmed factual error, reported through a correction, a report or support, must be fixed within 14 days of the instructor seeing it. We do not track that date ourselves: if an error is still there after 14 days and someone reports it to us, we may unlist the course until it is fixed. Keeping a course accurate and current over time is section 8 of the Course Content Policy.

8. Certificates

A course is complete when every lesson is marked complete, and a certificate, where the instructor enables one, is issued at that moment. It records that you completed the course, and it carries the signature the instructor gave the course's certificate when they enabled it. It does not assess how much you learned, and it is not a qualification; what it can and cannot be used for is in the Credential Policy.

Marking lessons complete without working through them earns a certificate that says nothing about you; we advise against it, and that alone is not a breach of this policy. A certificate earned through cheating in section 3, 4 or 5 is withdrawn. We do this only in clear cases, since the certificate is part of what you paid for, and we tell you when we do, by email and in your Account standing, where you can appeal it. The record is kept and marked withdrawn, so that a copy already printed verifies as withdrawn. Completing the course again does not bring it back; an appeal that succeeds reissues it with the same number.

9. How we enforce this

For students, the instructor acts first: they can comment on a submission, ask you to resubmit, and report it to us. Where a submission breaks section 3 or 4, we remove it, and the steps in the Account Enforcement & Appeals policy follow: a written warning, then restrictions, then closure of the account. Portfolio work that is not yours is removed. For instructors, section 7 and the Course Content Policy apply, under the same steps.

10. Reporting

To report a submission, open it and use Report; the reasons include "Plagiarism" and "Not the student's own work". To report a factual error in a lesson, select it and press Correct. For answer sharing, contract cheating or anything else, write to support@acada.ac. A person reads every report and tells you when it has been dealt with.

11. Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we change the date shown at the top. If a change adds a rule or a consequence, we post a notice in the app at least 14 days before it takes effect.

12. Related policies