- There is no doubt that plagiarism is a serious issue; needless to say, you should NOT do it. Unfortunately, I have to tell that it happens often, especially in Programming and Networking classes.
We encourage students to discuss with and help each other, but some people may not know clearly what is allowed and what is not. If you are one of them, I suggest you to watch the following video by a Stanford CS Professor talking about Stanford Honor Code:
https://youtu.be/KkMDCCdjyW8?t=2056
We at Guttman hold the same standard.
- Any piece of code or work that is eventually submitted for credits should never be shared by two or more people by any means. Scenarios like one sending a Java source code file to others, one showing partially or totally completed work to others through shared screen in Zoom or MS Teams, one telling others what the correct answer to a multiple-choice question is, one googling and downloading work posted by others from the Internet for submission are all plagiarism.
- There are scenarios that we do not consider plagiarism, such as multiple people discussing a question and drawing the conclusion for example that the program should use a
for
loop, one person who already completed work telling another that it’s not correct to use a boolean variable to save an integer value. We encourage you to work together in ways like these so that all of you actually learn from each other.
- Trailing far behind others can bring a lot of pressure on you, especially for people who are just a few steps away from graduation. My advice is that you should avoid being trapped in that situation by working hard from the beginning and reaching out for help early.
- When you communicate with me for help on your assignments, please do NOT expect me to provide the correct answer directly to you. What I typically do instead would be giving you some tips or hints or even ask you some guiding questions so that you can find mistakes and make corrections by yourself, thus essentially learning. I strongly believe that it’s crucial for students to learn how to fish for a lifetime rather than being given a fish to make through a day.
I hope these expectations can help clarify things and make both teaching and learning more effective. I believe eventually you will benefit from our policies, learn, and grow stronger academically. Your success is very important to me. Please remember that your professor is always here for you.