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Academic Honesty

As always, your work in this course should meet SFU's Code of Academic Integrity and Good Conduct.

In short: work should be completed by the person who submits it (or people for group work). Any work that is independent work of the submitter should be clearly cited to make its source clear.

All instances of academic dishonesty will be dealt with severely and according to SFU policy. This means that Student Services will be notified, and they will record the dishonesty in the student's file.

Interpretive Guide

This is adapted from honesty guidelines at York CS which I thought were a good summary of the issues in a CS context.

  1. We take the matter of academic honesty very seriously.
  2. Academic honesty is essentially giving credit where credit is due. And not misrepresenting what you have done and what work you have produced. When a piece of work is submitted by a student it is expected that all unquoted and uncited ideas and text are original to the student. Uncited and unquoted text, diagrams, etc., which are not original to the student, and which the student presents as their own work is considered academically dishonest.
  3. Statement 2 does not imply that students must work, study and learn in isolation. We encourage students to work, study and learn together, and to use the work of others as found in books, journal articles, electronic news, private conversations, etc.. In fact, most pieces of work are enhanced when relevant outside material is introduced. Thus instructors expect to see quotes, references and citations to the work of others. This shows the student is seeking out knowledge, integrating it with their own work, and perhaps more significantly, reducing some of the drudgery in producing a piece of work.
  4. Information can be divided into four types (1) the person's own ideas; (2) common knowledge; (3) paraphrase/summary from another's work, (4) direct quotation, includes photocopy of diagrams, tables, etc. Type 1 information is the person's own interpretation, program or ideas. Type 2 information is tricky. In computer science this could consist of ideas and information learned in other courses, since a purpose of a course is the dissemination of common knowledge, and in general life experiences. If in doubt treat as type 3 information. Type 3 requires a citation to the original work(s) and a brief statement crediting the author(s). Quotations are not used. See point 7. Type 4 requires quotation and citation. For diagrams, tables and other directly copied (photocopied) material quotes are inappropriate but citation is mandatory.
  5. If students collaborate on small parts of a work then each student must give notice that this took place by citing their collaborators. If substantial amounts of work are essentially identical, then it is best to submit a single work using joint authorship. It is disrespectful to instructors to submit two essential identical pieces of work, even if notice is given.
  6. As long as appropriate citation and notice is given students cannot be accused of academic dishonesty. Instructors will evaluate each piece of work in the context of their course and instructions given. If single authorship reports are expected, then joint authorship will receive lower marks; for example, split the grade among the authors, receive an F or some other rule could be used, this is instructor and course dependent.
  7. In citations state where the original work comes from, who the author is, what use was made of the work; copied, paraphrased, general idea used as basis, alternate technique for comparison, etc.
  8. If you cannot get your code to run, it is a good practice to let us know what tests you would have run and what the results of these test would have been had you been able to produce working code. You, however, must clearly document that this is what you are doing. If you hand in a program and what looks like output to the program, hoping that the marker will think that your program runs, then you are cheating and will be punished accordingly. Note, if you are not knowledgeable enough to get your program to run, what makes you confident that the mistake is not easily detectable by the instructor or TA.
Updated Fri Aug. 25 2023, 15:55 by ggbaker.