Academic Integrity and How We Help Ethically
This page explains MPB’s position on academic integrity — clearly, honestly, and without ambiguity. It describes what our tutoring service is, what it is not, and how we approach the tension between helping students with difficult work and ensuring that help is genuinely educational rather than a shortcut that undermines their learning and their institution’s standards.
What Tutoring Is
Tutoring is the process of helping a student understand material they have not yet fully understood. A tutor explains a concept in a different way than the textbook or lecturer did. A tutor works through a problem with a student, asking questions that surface where the reasoning is going wrong. A tutor identifies the gap in a student’s understanding — the missing piece of knowledge or the misapplied principle — and closes that gap through directed explanation and practice.
The outcome of genuine tutoring is that the student understands something they did not understand before. They can solve a class of problems they previously could not solve. They can apply a principle to situations they have not seen before. This is the educational value of tutoring, and it is what MPB is designed to deliver.
What Tutoring Is Not
Tutoring is not the transfer of answers. A student who does not understand centripetal force asking a tutor “what is the answer to question 4” and receiving that answer has not been tutored. They have received a completed answer to a specific question, which may or may not get them a grade on that question but does nothing for their understanding of the physics involved.
MPB does not operate as an answer-delivery service. Our tutors work through problems with students — explaining the physics, asking the student to attempt steps, identifying and correcting errors in reasoning, demonstrating methods — because that is what produces learning. The answer to the specific problem the student brings is an output of that process, not the goal of it.
Homework and Assignment Guidance
Many students bring specific homework problems or assignment questions to tutoring sessions. This is entirely appropriate. Physics homework problems are, almost always, practical applications of the concepts being taught in the course. Working through them in a tutoring session — with the tutor explaining the applicable principle, guiding the student’s attempt, and correcting their reasoning — is one of the most effective ways to develop both understanding and technique.
The distinction we draw is between using a homework problem as a learning vehicle (working through it to understand the physics) and using a tutor to complete a homework problem on the student’s behalf (providing a solution the student submits without understanding it). MPB’s tutors are trained to work in the former mode. The session notes and written explanations tutors provide after sessions are intended as learning references, not submission material.
Students are responsible for understanding and complying with their institution’s academic integrity policies. If your institution prohibits using tutoring assistance for assessed work, that policy governs your use of MPB’s services, not your choice of tutor.
Lab Reports and Project Work
MPB can help students understand the physics underlying their lab work — the principles being tested, the interpretation of data, the sources of experimental error, the physical meaning of their results. Tutors can work through these in a session as part of helping a student understand what their experiment actually demonstrates.
We apply the same distinction here as with homework: working through lab physics conceptually is tutoring. Writing a student’s lab report for them is not. Our tutors do not produce submission-ready lab reports on behalf of students.
What We Do Not Do
- We do not assist with live proctored exams, online exam-sitting, or any form of real-time exam assistance
- We do not produce work for submission as a student’s own independent work
- We do not guarantee grades — we guarantee teaching quality and matching quality
- We do not help students circumvent their institution’s integrity policies
Our Disclaimer
Our services aim to provide personalised academic guidance, helping students understand physics concepts and improve their skills. Materials provided in sessions and any written notes are for reference and learning purposes only. Misusing them for academic dishonesty or violations of integrity policies is strongly discouraged.
If you have a question about whether a specific use of MPB’s services is consistent with your institution’s academic integrity policy, we recommend checking with your institution directly. We are happy to explain exactly what our tutoring involves if that helps you make that determination — contact us at care@myphysicsbuddy.com.
Our Q&A Library
MPB’s Q&A library contains expert-answered physics questions written by verified physics tutors. These answers are public, freely accessible, and intended as educational resources. Students may reference them for learning, cite them as they would any educational resource, and use them to understand concepts or techniques. They are not submission material — they are explanations of physics written by physicists for students trying to understand physics.
The same principle applies as everywhere else: using an explanation to understand something is education. Copying an explanation and submitting it as original work is academic dishonesty. MPB produces the former; what students do with it is their responsibility.
