syllabus: academic integrity
Academic Integrity
In this course, students are required to work collaboratively on homework assignments unless otherwise specified by the instructor. Students may share any information with other members of their team, but must work independently of other teams.
The decision as to whether a student cheated depends on the intent of an assignment, the ground rules specified by the instructor, and the behavior of the student. Two guidelines help an instructor decide if cheating has occurred:
- Program plagiarism will be suspected if an assignment that calls for independent development and implementation of a program results in two or more solutions so similar that one can be converted to another by mechanical transformation.
- Cheating will be suspected if a student or team that was to complete an assignment independently cannot explain both the intricacies of their solution and the techniques used to generate that solution.
It is unreasonable to expect a complete definition of cheating; each case is important enough to be given careful, individual scrutiny. It is, however, helpful to have guidelines and precedents. Here are some examples of cases which are clearly cheating and clearly not cheating.
Large Language Models
Use of large language models is permitted for all homework in this class. Directly turning in the output of a large language model as your homework solution is not permitted. If multiple students turn in solutions so similar that one can be converted to another by mechanical means, they have committed plagiarism even if they had no contact with each other, but just turned in the output of the same LLM. Students are permitted to experiment with LLM prompts to customize their own solution. Using LLMs to improve your code, independently of other students or teams, is not cheating.
Cheating
- Turning in another individual's or team's work as your own (with or without their knowledge), Turning in a completely duplicated assignment is a flagrant offense.
- Allowing another team to turn in your work as their own
- Several teams writing one program and turning in multiple copies, all represented (implicitly or explicitly) as their own team's work
- Using any part of other students' work without the proper acknowledgment
- Soliciting help with homework or exam questions from contract cheating sites such as Chegg
- Communicating with another student in any way during an exam, or about the material on an exam you have taken before the other student has taken the exam
Not Cheating
- Turning in work done alone, with other members of your team, or with the help of the course staff
- Getting or giving help on how to do something on Github, an IDE, or a software tool used in a course project
- Answering questions for other students on programming mechanisms that can be used to implement required functionality, without actually writing code for them
- High-level discussion of course material for better understanding
- Discussion of assignments to understand what is being asked for
The instructor and course staff will not condone cheating. They will use software to try to detect cheating. When cheating is suspected, instructors will take reasonable action to establish whether it has occurred. If it has, the instructor or the Office of Student Conduct will apply appropriate disciplinary policy. All violations and penalties will be reported to the Office of Student Conduct, in accordance with NCSU policy. Records are kept by the OSC for a period of ten years after the violation; they do not result in a permanent notation on a student's record. However, the student always has the right to bring the case before the Office of Student Conduct, if, for example, he/she feels this will result in a more sympathetic hearing. Failure to request that the case be brought before the Office of Student Conduct will be deemed a waiver of this right.
A list of possible disciplinary actions is given below:
Actions within the course
- No credit, reduced credit, or negative credit for the assignment.
- Loss of a letter grade for the course.
- Failure in the course.
- Forced drop in the course.
Actions by the University
- Failure in the course.
- Academic integrity probation for at least a year.
- Suspension from the University for a designated period.
- Expulsion from the University.
The following policies apply to all cases of cheating and plagiarism:
For a first offense, the penalty will always be more severe than the penalty for failing to turn in the assignment (or take the exam) in question.
Incidents will be reported to the Office of Student Conduct.
E. F. Gehringer
1/10/85, rev. 8/14/11, 8/23/18, 8/13/20, 8/19/23
ncsu.edu