Academic Dishonesty

Figure 1: A cheater is removed from the Operating Systems course.

This really should not be an issue, but recurring incidents of cheating have made discussing the issue necessary. The bottom line is that you are expected to conduct yourself as a person of integrity. If you are caught cheating, there will be very serious consequences.

You are expected to adhere to the highest standards of academic integrity. This means that plagiarism in any form is unacceptable. As a (soon to be) computing professional, I encourage you to consult the code of ethics appropriate to your discipline (the IEEE, the IEEE Computer Society, and the ACM).

Plagiarism will be assumed, until disproved, on work that is essentially the same as that of other students. This includes identically incorrect, off-the-wall, and highly unusual duplicate answers where the probability of a sheer coincidence is extremely unlikely. All parties to this unacceptable collaboration will receive the same (zero) score. A zero score on either examinations or on a segment of the programming project is grounds for failing the course.

Your work must be your own. This refers to examinations, written assignments and programming projects. Should you be found to be cheating, at a minimum, you will fail that assignment and a letter will be sent to your Department, the School of Engineering, and to your Provost and academic preceptor. I reserve the right to stronger action should the situation warrant it.

You may discuss programming projects with your friends, but you are expected to abide by the Gilligan's Island rule. Under no circumstances may you look at another students's code or show other students your code. And while you may discuss the concepts used in the programming assignments, you may not discuss implementation details of the assignments. The only thing you may bring to such a discussion is you, and no notes may be taken away from the meeting. The copying of code is strictly forbidden.

The Gilligan's Island rule states that following a discussion of the project, a break must be taken for at least a half hour before coding. Watching something inane like Gilligan's Island on television satisfies this rule. Better yet, read a non-computer book before beginning to code the project: for example, I am reading the Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb this month (John Gardner's Freddy's Book or Grendel also make for interesting reading).