Academic Dishonesty and Collaboration Policy for cs14

Guidelines on collaboration

• Midterm, final, quizzes, lab practicals - Obviously there will be no collaboration allowed in any of these areas
• In-class exercises - Dependent on instructor instructions for a particular exercise.
• Homeworks - Collaboration is strongly ENCOURAGED. Study groups are very helpful for learning. Collaboration should consist of discussion of the homework problems and steps necessary to complete them. However, you should write out your own solutions. You should not turn in *identical* solutions as others, but similar solutions are okay. You should write up the final solutions yourself.
• In-lab exercises - Collaboration is strongly ENCOURAGED. If you complete an exercise, feel free to help others -- teaching enhances your own learning. However, you should not show your completed code to those you are helping nor should you ever write code for them. Rather, try to lead them towards the correct answer with hints, or help them debug. Copying code from ANY source (any book, current or past students (excluding your current lab partner), past solutions, web, etc) is strictly not allowed even with citation.
• At-home programming assignments - Limited collaboration may be acceptable, but programs must represent YOUR OWN original work. Sharing code or team-coding are strictly not allowed. Copying code from ANY source (any book, current or past students, past solutions, web, etc) is strictly not allowed even with citation. Collaboration may consist of discussing the general approach to solving the problem, but should not involve communicating in code or even pseudo-code. Students may help others find bugs. Your code MUST be unique -- the odds of randomly producing similar code is very low. Computing, like surgery or driving a car or playing golf, can only be learned by doing it yourself!

Guidelines on academic dishonesy

• PROTECT YOUR CODE!! - Do not allow anybody to inadvertently obtain a copy of your code. For example, if you print your code and the printer is out of paper, DO NOT LEAVE. Either get paper from systems or cancel your print job. If you leave, later on someone will put paper in the printer and out will come your code. Furthermore, do not throw any code into the trashcans in the lab.
• It is considered against computer account policy to tamper with another's account. Thus, if you give someone else your password and they copy your work or turn something in for you, both parties will have committed academic dishonesty.
• Be aware that programs are automatically compared to the current and prior quarter's programs for plagiarism, using a sophisticated code-comparison tool that ignores insignificant differences (like whitespace and variable names). If you're smart enough to fool the instructors, TAs, and code-comparison tools, you're more than smart enough to do the programs on your own!
• Be aware that completed exams are photocopied. Those photocopies may be used for comparison with exams submitted for regrades, so don't make changes. Also, be aware that lying to an instructor in order to be able to make up a missed exam or in other ways to obtain a better grade can be treated as academic dishonesty. During exams, cell phones and PDAs must be stored away in a place not visible (e.g., inside a backpack).