The bottom line is any work you turn in, unless explicitly directed otherwise, must be your own.  Having said this, I believe students can learn from each other and should take advantage of this opportunity.  Getting help in understanding what an assignment is about or finding a syntax mistake in your code are all valid and useful.  However, it can be very easy to cross the line and receive excessive help and thereby diminish your educational experience.  Furthermore, violation of my academic integrity policy constitutes academic dishonesty at Beloit College and has serious consequences.

I have found from previous experiences it is necessary to provide greater guidance due to the large number of academic dishonesty cases that have resulted in substantial penalties for students.  You should know I have vigorous pursued all cases of academic dishonesty.  Though I hope this will not happen, I am including this information to help avoid any future problems.

The majority of previous academic dishonesty cases that I have dealt with fall into these categories:

1. One student takes advantage of another student without her/his knowledge
2. One student who knows the answer provides excessive assistance to another student in formulating a solution to an assignment
3. Two students collaborate excessively in formulating a solution to an assignment
4. A student uses an unacceptable outside source to formulate her/his solution to an assignment

In the first category, the student primarily responsible for the academic dishonesty obtains the ideas or actual solution of another student without that student's knowledge. This is commonly known as stealing someone else's work. Students are required to take reasonable precautions against another student obtaining their work.  On the Mac computers you should remove your work from the local hard disk and save it elsewhere (floppy or file server) whenever you are finished with a computer.  Then delete the files from the machine and empty the trash to completely remove it from the computer. It is also wise not to recycle your printouts with assignment solutions in the bins in or near the computer lab.

In the second category, a student who knows the solution to another student's problem provides excessive assistance. Often the two people are friends or at least know each other. For many people it is only natural to want to help someone they know. However, providing too much help hurts all the students in the class. First, the student receiving the help does not experience the learning process as s/he should. Unless stated otherwise, assignments are designed to help a student learn by individually performing the work. If the work is not done individually then the learning process is not achieved. Second, it is not fair to the rest of the students in the class who work individually. Finally, it will hurt the student providing the help because s/he is guilty of academic dishonesty. Both the student providing and the student receiving excessive help are guilty of academic dishonesty. Here are some guidelines to help you understand what is appropriate behavior:

1. Working together to understand the course concepts is always appropriate. For example, discussing the lecture material, algorithms or code provided in class, textbook, or notes is both allowed and a useful way to learn.
2. Discussing ways to solve homework or programming assignments is not appropriate, except where explicitly stated in that assignment. If you go beyond the general ideas of the class and discuss specific assignments then you are violating course policy. It is often tempting to cross this line so you should be very careful here.
3. Helping someone fix a syntax mistake in her/his code or understand a compiler error message is fine. However, if you find yourself looking at more than a couple of lines of code or providing general help then you should stop and have the person come to me for further help.

In the third category, two or more people work together in formulating the solution. This is similar to the second category except all students contribute to the answer. As described above, discussing course concepts is fine but not the solution of a specific assignment. For reasons similar to those discussed for the second category, all students working together are guilty of academic dishonesty.

In the fourth category, a student uses an unacceptable source to solve the problem. For written questions, it is acceptable to use books and to check your work with the computer (e.g., to see if a particular code fragment compiles/runs). It is not acceptable to get help from anyone other than me unless explicitly stated in that assignment. For the programming assignments, you may not use any source other than the class notes, books listed for this class, a general programming book, work you have previously done, the assignment write-up, and any files that you are told to copy from the class directory. For any work you turn in for this class, you must explicitly state any person(s) or source(s) you used in formulating the solution. You must make clear how and where you used these sources. The only exception is help from me. This includes any code you use from any source (copied or modified). Any professional would comment code s/he copied.

Please keep in mind that I have discussed the most common conduct issues for this class. It is not meant to be an exhaustive list of all possible ways to violate course or College policy and thereby commit academic dishonesty.

By default, all work will be individual in this class. If group work is permitted it will be explicitly stated in the assignment. The exact rules for the group work will be given. You may only work in the way specified and cannot work in larger groups or in other ways. Again, if you have any doubts come to me before you act. As stated above, you need to specify those that worked together in written comments included with your assignment. By including your name in an assignment you are indicating you understand and contributed to the entire assignment. If this is not the case you must explicitly include comments to that effect. These comments should indicate which parts of the assignment you understand and which parts you do not along with what parts you did and did not contribute toward. This is true even if the group assignment explicitly stated that individuals were to work on different parts. Since you should know all material covered in the class, ultimately you need to understand all aspects of assignments including work done by others in your group. This is part of the learning process for this class. Failure to document at the time it is turned in the parts you did not help with or don't understand is a violation of course policy and thereby academic dishonesty. Failure to ultimately understand assignments means you have not learned all the course material and this can impact your grade.

I believe that the vast majority of students wish to abide by the conduct rules for this class. I hope these explanations clarify and explain the conduct rules for this class. Again, my goal is for you to learn as much as possible. If the conduct rules are not clear then you should discuss them with me before doing work for this class. If you have any doubts during the semester, check with me before you act. If yo think these conduct rules are adversely influencing your learning then come and discuss it with me so I can seriously consider modifying them. If you are having problems in this class, I strongly urge you to come to see me early so I can help you. Please look at my comments on this topic.