Copyright law applies to everyone. Writing assignments means reading, researching, exploring ideas and forming your own opinions. You cannot just cut and paste stuff from the internet, and stitch it together with a few words of your own! This is called plagiarism! You will be found out and you will get no marks for it!
To make you and the University legally compliant you cannot use someone else’s work unless:
You may copy up to the following under the University’s copyright Licence:
More information here:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-to-copyright
http://he.cla.co.uk/your-he-licence/your-he-licence/about-the-cla-higher-education-licence-2/
In addition staff will be interested in this information
https://www.cla.co.uk/sites/default/files/Role-specific%20guidance%20-%20Academic%20staff.pdf