Plagiarism
This sounds, and is, a form of dishonesty, though some might not completely realise where the boundaries lie between what is permitted and what is not. The basic principle is that no one should pass off someone else's work as if it were their own. There is nothing wrong using someone else's work. Academic work almost always builds on previous work. But when you are quoting someone else, or using their work in another way, you must say so. That means that whenever you use someone else’s words, put them in quotation marks (“ “), and give the reference (eg Jones (1992) p.20, with the full reference in a bibliography), or you might prefer to put a footnote (“See Jones, Title of work , p. 100”). So, never use another's words, or ideas, as if they were yours. Quite apart from the dishonesty, it is important to practise expressing things in your own words. But it is dishonest, and could lead to disciplinary action against you.
There is an industry in essays published on the internet. If you use these for tutorials you will be throwing away the essential part of the learning process: you will be the loser. You will disadvantage yourself in preparing for the examination. You will also be abusing your relationship with your tutor. And if these are used in any examination (for example, a dissertation) you will have committed an offence against University regulations and be disqualified, or worse. Examiners and tutors are better at spotting this than students realise.
Be careful how you use other internet sources. These can be useful, sometimes invaluable. But never cut and paste from these sources into any work of yours, or make very close copies of them, without expressly indicating that you have done this, and identifying clearly exactly which passages in your work are derived in this way. It is not good enough just to acknowledge in a list of references that you have used certain sources when preparing your work. Anyone reading it has to be able to distinguish immediately between your own thoughts and words and when you are reporting the thoughts and words of others.
Proctors webpage on Plagiarism
Graduate students are particularly encouraged to follow the on-line course to be found at:
http://www.skillsportal.ox.ac.uk/course_listing_details.php?code=OLC-1-1