Working Together in CSCI 261
"Your code is like your boyfriend or girlfriend. It's okay to talk about it on an abstract, high level. But you don't want to go into the specific details, and you certainly don't want to share."
- Professor Pascal Van Hentenryck, Brown University, 1997
The CSCI 261 Collaboration Policy follows; it is essentially the collaboration policy for all courses in the EECS department.
- If the project is an individual effort project1 you are not allowed to give code you have developed to another student or use code provided by another student. If the project is a group project, you are only allowed to share code with your group members.
- You are encouraged to discuss programming projects with other students in the class, as long as the following rules are followed:
- You view another student's code only for the purpose of offering/receiving debugging assistance. Students can only give advice on what problems to look for; they cannot debug your code for you. All changes to your code must be made by you.
- Your discussion is subject to the empty hands policy, which means you leave the discussion without any record [electronic, mechanical or otherwise] of the discussion.
- Any material from any outside source such as books, projects, and in particular, from the Web, should be properly referenced and should only be used if specifically allowed for the assignment.
- If you are aware of students violating this policy, you are encouraged to inform the professor of the course. Violating this policy will be treated as an academic misconduct for all students involved. See the Student Handbook for details on academic dishonesty.
Be aware! Plagiarism is treated very aggressively in this class. Violations of this policy will result in an F course grade for all students involved, and a notice will be sent to Academic Affairs.
1 Unless otherwise specified in writing, all CSCI 261 labs and assignments are to be individual efforts
How Cases of Plagiarism are Handled
It is fair to inform you that all homework assignments are checked via an automated system that generates similarity metrics between your work and that of all other students and previous student work in this class. When a high-level of similarity is detected, the course coordinator is notified and investigates the similarity. If plagiarism is evident, the course coordinator will then send you an email notice and you will need to meet with him in person.
Examples of Academic Misconduct
The following examples below are provided to illustrate examples of academic misconduct.
- Viewing another student's quiz, test, paper, or code while working on your own (rubber-necking).
- Providing another student a copy, electronic or otherwise, of your work.
- Accepting a copy, electronic or otherwise, of another student's work.
- Copying and pasting any component of another student’s work into your own.
- Copying solutions found online or otherwise, and pasting into your own work without proper citation.
These scenarios will always be considered as academic misconduct except when involving an assigned project partner.
Portions © Keith Hellman, Yong Joseph Bakos.