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Policy on Collaboration

Programming assignments must be completed individually; all code you submit must be your own work.  You may discuss general ideas of how to approach an assignment, but never specific details about the code to write.  Any help you receive from or provide to classmates should be limited and should never involve details of how to code a solution.  It is unfair to yourself, your classmates, and the course staff to submit an assignment that does not reflect your individual work.  To ensure a fair course, we vigorously pursue all cases of academic misconduct.

You must abide by the following:

  • You may not work as a partner with another student on an assignment.
  • You may not show another student your solution to an assignment, nor look at his/her solution.
  • You may not have another person "walk you through" an assignment, describe in detail how to solve it, or sit with you as you write it.  This includes current or former students, tutors, friends, TAs, web site forums, or anyone else. You also may not provide such help to another student.   

Under our policy, a student who gives inappropriate help is as guilty as one who receives it.  Instead of providing such help, refer other students to class resources such as lecture examples, the textbook, the IPL, or emailing a TA or instructor.  You must not share your solution and ideas with others.  You must also ensure that your work is not copied by others by not leaving it in public places, emailing it others, posting it on the web, etc.

If you are retaking the course, you may resubmit a previous solution unless that program was involved in an academic misconduct case.  If misconduct was found, you must write a new version of that program.

We enforce this policy by running similarity-detection software over all submitted student programs, including programs from past quarters.  Violations are pursued aggressively: It is unpleasant for the course staff and very unpleasant for the students involved.  In some cases, the situation is sent to a University committee and can lead to marks on permanent academic records.