You are responsible for understanding every word in this document.
Motivation: A course in which students do not accurately present what they know and what
work they have done is worse than having no course at all. Your instructor
and your fellow students expect
and deserve a basic respect for the integrity of this course and an environment
where we can all focus on learning. Therefore, this document establishes
a clear understanding of what we all will do with
the expectation that it will never be an issue.
Bottom Line: If you are
ever unclear about how to represent what work you have done, (a) ask and
(b) describe clearly what you have done. If you do, the worst
that will happen is you will lose some
credit on an assignment. This is much better than the alternative.
If you are at all in doubt about whether your collaboration was appropriate,
include a description of your collaboration with your homework submission.
If the course staff receives homework submissions that are too similar to
have been created independently, or are derived from
other sources, we will pursue the maximum penalty allowed by
the
University.
Collaboration: You are encouraged to discuss the material in
this course, including homework problems. But you must produce your own homework
solutions and you
must not look at other students'
solutions or other information that takes away the intellectual challenge
of the homework.
Unless specifically told otherwise, you are to complete
assignments
individually. You may discuss
assignments in general terms with other students including a discussion of
how to approach a problem, but the code you write must be your own. The intent
is
to allow you to get some help when you
are stuck, but this help should be limited and should never involve details
of how to code a solution. You may not have another person (current student,
former
student, tutor, friend, anyone) "walk you
through" how to solve an assignment.
Fine Print: It's not effective for us to try to define a list of all impermissible activities.
This approach can tempt people to look for loopholes.
Consider the point above: "the code you write must be your own."
This includes things like not using any substantive material or solutions from
similar assignments this term or previous terms at UW or elsewhere,
including anywhere on the Internet, transcribing solutions from any
other source, etc. Our policy is intended to convey the spirit of
the law, fully understanding that the letter of the law may not
cover everything that someone may think of.
Computer Science & Engineering
University of Washington
Box 352350
Seattle, WA 98195-2350
(206) 543-1695 voice, (206) 543-2969 FAX
[comments to Hal Perkins]