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 contact me.
Please watch the brief video about integrity.
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).
A reminder that the slides from the first class have information and examples, and please, please check it, or with us, if you have any questions.
Getting Help and Using Sources
Especially for computer science classes, there are generally questions about what is and is not allowed. You are encouraged to discuss the subject matter and assignments with others. The Piazza discussion board provides a great forum for this, and since we monitor it, you will get immediate feedback if there is a developing problem. However, you may not write or complete assignments for another student; allow another student to write or complete your assignments; pair program; copy someone else’s work; or allow your work to be copied. This list is not inclusive.
You are free to use online references like Stack Overflow for questions that are not the primary aspect of the course. If, for example, you’re having an issue with unicode in Python, or are getting a weird compilation error, then sites like Stack Overflow are a great resource. Don’t get stuck fighting your tools. You may generally use external libraries (and even parts of standard libraries), provided what you use does not actually implement what you are directed to implement. However, be sure to properly acknowledge and cite external help, be it from students, third party libraries, Wikipedia, or any other source.
If you have any questions about what is or is not acceptable, ask first.
"Study" Sites
There are a number of sites that are primarily designed to help people get through classes without learning the material or doing the supporting work. Despite the self-branding as "study sites," these are cheating sites, and using them will reduce your ability to learn the course material. In addition, the material on these sites is typically stolen, that is, used without permission of the authors. Uploading any course materials to any external site is is a violation of this class's academic integrity policy, because (1) it risks aiding and abetting, and (2) it is a copyright violation. It goes without saying that getting answers to homeworks, quizzes, etc. from such sites is plagiarism, and is academically dishonest. These violations will be handled like any other.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. This means that every member of a group is responsible for the group's submission. If one member is academically dishonest, all members may be sanctioned, regardless of individual actions.
There may be additional penalties for failing to contribute to the group as expected or involving your group members in academic misconduct, which may go beyond a zero on the assignment. 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 and a one-letter-grade reduction in the final class grade. However, depending on the nature of the offense, the penalty may be more severe, including but not limited to an F for the course, suspension, or expulsion. The minimum penalty for a second offense of academic dishonesty is an F for the course without possibility of dropping, 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 their 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.