technologyWise Academy exists to help students understand programming and computer science, develop their own problem-solving skills, and become more independent learners. This policy applies whenever an Academy instructor helps with school, college, university, or other assessed work.
The student remains the author of assessed work.
Academy instructors teach, question, explain, demonstrate, review, and give feedback.
Course and institution rules always govern the assistance a student may use.
What instructors can do
- Explain concepts, syntax, algorithms, data structures, debugging methods, and problem-solving strategies.
- Work through practice problems or examples that teach the same underlying skills.
- Ask guiding questions and help a student break a problem into smaller steps.
- Review code the student has written and point out errors, unclear reasoning, edge cases, or areas to investigate.
- Help the student use debuggers, tests, compiler messages, documentation, and other tools allowed by the student's course.
- Discuss an assignment specification and help the student understand what it asks.
- Help plan study, test preparation, or a personal project.
Activities outside Academy tutoring
Academy instructors decline requests to:
- Complete assessed work for a student or provide a submission-ready solution that substitutes for the student's own work.
- Write substantial portions of an assignment, project, report, or program that the student intends to submit as their own.
- Take a quiz, test, examination, interview, coding assessment, or other individual evaluation for a student.
- Provide or help use leaked, stolen, restricted, or otherwise unauthorized assessment materials.
- Help conceal outside assistance, unauthorized collaboration, copied work, or use of a prohibited tool.
- Use large-language-model tools, code generators, solution repositories, or other resources when the student's course rules prohibit them.
- Impersonate a student or access a course system under the student's identity.
Assignments, debugging, and projects
A student may bring an assignment or project to a lesson. The instructor can help the student interpret requirements, reason about approaches, locate bugs, test ideas, and understand feedback. As the work approaches a graded deliverable, the instructor keeps the student's authorship visible: the student makes the substantive decisions, writes the submitted work, and can explain what it does and why.
Collaboration, AI, and outside tools
Rules vary by course. Some instructors permit collaboration, AI tools, reference implementations, online resources, or extensive tutoring; others place tighter limits on them. Students must tell the Academy about any relevant restrictions. When the rules are unclear, the safest path is for the student to ask their teacher, professor, or teaching assistant before using the disputed form of help.
Group lessons
Group tutoring supports shared learning while preserving individual authorship. Instructors can teach common concepts and use shared practice examples. Students keep submitted solutions private when their course requires individual work, and the Academy keeps each student's submitted solution separate from other students' answers.
Responsibilities
Students are responsible for knowing and following the rules that apply to their work, describing relevant restrictions to the instructor, and submitting only work they are entitled to submit.
Academy instructors are responsible for keeping tutoring focused on learning, respecting course restrictions communicated to them, and changing or ending an activity when it crosses an academic-integrity boundary.
If a request crosses the line
The instructor will redirect the lesson toward concepts, similar practice, debugging methods, or another form of permitted help. The Academy may decline a particular request or discontinue tutoring where repeated requests would require the instructor to participate in academic misconduct.
Institutional rules
This Academy policy operates alongside the rules of the student's own school or institution. Where those rules are more specific or more restrictive, they control the student's assessed work. Ottawa-area university students may wish to review the official Carleton University Academic Integrity information or the University of Ottawa Academic Regulation A-4.
Policy version: August 11, 2026. Questions about whether a particular kind of help is appropriate can be raised before or during a lesson.