All students must read, understand, and follow the course policy on academic integrity. Each student will be asked to verify they have read and understood the policy. If you have questions, please come see me.
Academic Integrity
Types of Academic Dishonesty
- Plagiarism: Using a source (for code, text, images, or designs) without appropriate citations and recognition.
- Fabrication: Fabricating sources or any other information in your assignments is academically dishonest.
- Aiding and abetting: Providing another student with answers, or helping them to cheat, is an equally serious violation of the principles of academic honesty. A student who commits such an offense is subject to the same penalties.
- Copying: Using another student's work for an assignment, exam, or project without acknowledgment.
This is not a complete list. To read the full Student Academic Conduct Policy, consult the UMBC Student Handbook, the Faculty Handbook, and the UMBC Policies section of the UMBC Directory (or for graduate courses, the Graduate School website).
Reminder that the slides from the first class have a lot of information and examples, and please, please check them, or with us, if you have any questions.
Group Work
Some work may be group work, which will be submitted by a group of two or more students. When submitting such an assignment, the same rules apply, except that the submitted work must be the work of the students as a group. By submitting a group assignment, each student is representing that the assignment is the work of the entire group, and each student takes full responsibility for the assignment's originality and content.
There may be additional penalties for failing to contribute to the group as expected or involving your group members in academic misconduct.
Note that this means that if a student in a group makes no contribution to the assignment, the rest of the group must not include their name. If someone does not contribute to a project, claiming that they did is aiding and abetting.
Penalties
Academic misconduct could result in disciplinary action that may include, but is not limited to, suspension or dismissal.
The absolute minimum penalty for a first offense of academic dishonesty in this course is a grade of zero on the assignment. However, depending on the nature of the offense, the penalty may be more severe, including a reduced letter grade, an F for the course, suspension, or expulsion. The minimum penalty for a second offense of academic dishonesty is an F for the course, but may be more severe.
Appropriate Citations
For this course it is both okay and a good idea for students to read together, discuss project ideas, and generally work together. However, whatever a student turns in must be his/her own. A good rule of thumb is that it is okay to talk about problems, but it is not okay to share written materials or code.
If you incorporate written materials or code from any source in the project, an appropriate citation is required. Here is an excellent overview of the APA style for correctly citing a source. Code from other sources must be described in an additional document turned in with the assignment or documented clearly in the code itself.
A Final Note
Plagiarism is a very serious integrity violation. If you copy material from somewhere else, even a public source, it is plagiarism. If you ever find yourself using a copy-paste function—even for a single sentence—you are plagiarizing. If you have questions, see the slides from the first class, and talk to the professor or TA before getting in serious trouble.