Course Academic Integrity Policy

As with all your coursework and your life in general for that matter, you are expected to act ethically. See the The undergraduate ethics policy for more details, and also read the CS Department's academic integrity code.

  • For the homeworks, you are welcome to work on assignments with other students in the class; however, you must not simply copy/paste (or, copy/paste/minor edit) from another person's answer. In other words, while you can work closely together on a problem you each must produce your own answers with your own hands/fingers. A good place to draw the line here is to never email or otherwise electronically share any files, or photocopy any papers, for other students. Eyeball sharing on the other hand is encouraged.
  • For the homeworks, you must list both (1) any other student that you worked closely with on the homework. This is equivalent to how a good researcher gives citatations for any articles they used in writing their own paper.
  • For some of the simpler questions ChatGPT or Google knows the answers. But you must solve them yourself as that is how you are going to learn how to solve the harder questions that ChatGPT and Google will not be able to help you with. Pasting/tweaking answers from a search in one of these tools constitutes cheating.
  • Some of the programming assignments may be auto-graded. There are ways to subvert the auto-grader but any such action is unethical and constitutes cheating. Please do not attempt to circumvent or otherwise hack the autograder.
  • Cheating is immoral. Cheaters that are caught will be punished as is required under University policy. Please report all instances of cheating you see to the professor.
  • Clear-cut cases of cheating will be reported to the Undergraduate Academic Ethics Board, or to the WSE Dean if the student is a graduate student. If a student is found guilty, this information is
    placed on their permanent academic record and suspension or expulsion may result.
  • If some action seems a grey area to you, please ask first before proceeding!