Institution: University of Missouri - Columbia Date: 01 Feb 1989 Contact: CSPKB@UMCVMB.MISSOURI.EDU or CCGREG@UMCVMB.MISSOURI.EDU COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT Statement on Academic Dishonesty During the last two or three semesters there has been an increase in the number of cases of academic dishonesty reported in computer science courses. The penalty for dishonesty can be very severe and ranges from being placed on disciplinary probation for a semester to permanent expulsion from the University. For this reason, we urge you to avoid behavior that may ruin your academic career and affect your life even after you leave the university. The Computer Science Department will not tolerate cheating and has a policy of severity towards it. The commonest form of academic dishonesty in computer science classes is plagiarism: submitting another person's program as your own. This has been made extremely easy by computer networks which enable students to send files to a friend. The convenience of editing makes it possible for the student receiving the file to alter the names of variables and procedures, change comments, permute the order in which the procedures occur and make other similar changes. What most students don't seem to realize is that the computer records all transmissions of files so the Security Officer in the Computer Center can easily trace such activities and tell us to the very second when they occurred. Beginning students also fail to realize how easy it is to detect that two programs are basically identical in spite of the kinds of alterations most students make. It is nearly as ridiculous as changing the names of Scarlet O'Hara and Rhett Butler and claiming to have written Gone With the Wind! Another common approach is to look up an old program in some fraternity's files. What happens in a surprising number of cases is that two people do this independently and are surprised when they are charged with cheating even though they don't know each other. Most students do not set out with the intention of cheating but under the pressure of deadlines students who are not keeping up find themselves unable to get their work done on time and succumb to the temptation to take the easy way out. When they get caught they often spend several sleepless nights wondering whether they will be expelled and how they can explain it to their parents if they are. They also spend a good deal of time answering questions posed by their instructor, by me, and by the Vice-Provost. In some courses at a more advanced level, students may be allowed to work together as a team to complete a complicated assignment involving hundreds or even thousands of lines of code. If you are permitted to work together your teacher will inform you about how it is to be done. Otherwise, assume that you are to do your work independently. Some students form a habit of studying with a friend or roommate and become so dependent on each other that they find it difficult to work independently. When such students take programming courses together they run a risk of being charged with cheating even though they may not "feel" that they have been dishonest. It is best to do your own work and to learn to think for yourself. Another situation that arises occasionally involves an over-zealous tutor who finds it easier to write your programs than to teach you how to write them yourself. Your tutor may have other students who are also getting "heavy duty help" and you may find yourself accused of cheating from a person you have never met. It is your responsibility to write your own program. The fact that you are paying a tutor does not keep it from being plagiarism if the tutor write your program. If you pay attention in class, start working on your assignments as soon as they are assigned, read the appropriate sections in your textbook and get help from your teacher when you find something unclear, you should be able to write your own programs without an undue amount of difficulty or frustration. Of course, if you wait until the last day before the assignment is due and expect a user consultant to write most of your program, you are in trouble. For one thing, U.C.'s are specifically forbidden to give assistance on homework assignments and it is not their job to function as your teacher. As in most things, there are borderline cases, fuzzy situations in which one might not know for certain whether or not something would be considered cheating. We try to keep our distance from those border lines when bringing charges of plagiarism and we hope you will avoid the border line in doing your work. If you have real questions about whether something you are doing is cheating (not hypothetical questions devised to create a puzzle), ask your teacher or course coordinator. Paul Blackwell Professor & Chairman