Winter 2021 CPA PEP Plagiarism Recap

Winter 2021 Plagiarism Statistics

Plagiarism—submitting someone else’s work as your own—is unacceptable in CPA education and carries serious consequences such as failure of the module and/or expulsion. Following every session, CPAWSB investigates suspected instances, and below we share the results from the Winter 2021 CPA PEP session.

Winter 2021 Plagiarism Occurrences

During the Winter 2021 CPA PEP session, plagiarism instances included the following:

Exam Plagiarism

Exam plagiarism occurs where responses are copied from:

• Websites
  • CPA provided solutions
  • CPA Learning E-Book without citation

Assignment Plagiarism

Assignment plagiarism occurs where assignments are submitted with materials copied from:

• Other candidates (both the enabler and copier face consequences)
  • Material directly provided by another candidate
  • Material indirectly provided through sources such as WhatsApp or Course Hero
  • Online assignment sharing websites (CourseHero, Chegg, etc.)
  • CPA Learning E-Book without citation

All individuals found guilty of plagiarism or enabling plagiarism during the Winter 2021 session incurred serious consequences.

Websites

Recently there has been an increase in candidates using websites during end-of-module examinations.  Using any reference materials other than the approved materials is unacceptable and is an exam rules violation.

If candidates reference materials found on a website for module assignments, they must cite their sources and ensure that the majority of the work is their own.

Course Hero (Third-Party Resource Websites)

Uploading or copying material from resource sites such as Course Hero is also unacceptable and several instances of plagiarism during the Winter session were due to assignments being copied from these sites. If you have uploaded assignments to Course Hero or another resource site, have the material removed immediately as you are enabling plagiarism and will face serious consequences. You can avoid a plagiarism investigation by not visiting resource sites such as Course Hero.

Submitting CPA Solutions

Under no circumstance are CPA-provided solutions to be shared with others or submitted for an assignment or online assessment. If you submit CPA-provided solutions, you will face serious consequences. All candidate work is reviewed through Turnitin software, which is designed to detect instances of plagiarism by comparing submitted items against information on the internet, CPA Canada solutions, and all previous CPA PEP candidate submissions from across Canada. You can avoid a plagiarism investigation by not submitting CPA-provided solutions or parts of CPA-provided solutions in your assignments or online assessments.