Help: Fitness to Practice Appeal!

I need your help! I had assumed that during laboratories you are always allowed to share your results - as I never had any problems with sharing results with my colleagues the whole time I have been at this uni. This was a computer lab because I had lost my file, I could not complete the work and so I had asked my friend for help and took a picture of the results. The teacher did NOT explicitly say that we were to work ONLY individually, it was NOT an assessment and everyone was discussing the work together.

I was then referred to a fitness to practice meeting, using the file/results I used from my colleague (teacher demanded it) and they put a warning on my record for plagiarism/academic fraud. I was shocked that it got to that level as me and my classmate were not informed that sharing results weren’t allowed - otherwise they would not have shared it with me.

I am a 3rd yr student and this is the first time I have heard of individual only labs.

How do I appeal this - because am I wrong in thinking this is totally unreasonable? This is really stressing me out and I emailed my student union.

Thanks in advance

So this wasn't for an assessed piece of work? It wasn't a formal assignment?

Seems like an overreaction from the university to me.

It's mad to me that you get to third year without understanding the difference between co-operation and collusion. It is not the University's job to continually inform you, it is incumbent upon you to know.

Any appeal would, I am certain, fail. It's cut and dry academic malpractice, unfortunately. In 3rd year, you are lucky it hasn't been escalated further and I really think that you have got off somewhat lightly. Take the win.