Academic Integrity

At https://www.deanofstudents.ucla.edu/Academic-Integrity, the Office of the Dean of Students presents University policy on academic integrity, with special attention to cheating, plagiarism, and student discipline. The policy summaries don't specifically address programming assignments in detail, so we state our policy here.

Of course, you understand that your work on programming assignments must be your own. But we understand that high-level discussions about approaches to a problem have educational value and are acceptable. So where do we draw the line? We'll decide each case on its merits, but here are some categorizations:

Acceptable:

• Clarifying what an assignment is requiring
• Discussing algorithms for solving a problem, perhaps accompanied by pictures, without writing any code
• Helping someone find a minor problem with their code, provided that offering such assistance doesn't require examining more than a few lines of code
• Turning in someone's work without crediting the author of that work, if the source of that work is the course text or if that work was produced at or after the start of this quarter by a CS 31 instructor or a CS 31 TA or a CS 31 LA

Unacceptable:

• Turning in any portion of someone's work without crediting the author of that work, if the source of that work is not the course text and if that work was either not produced by a CS 31 instructor or a CS 31 TA or a CS 31 LA or was produced before the start of the quarter
• Using or adapting a portion of or all of a solution from earlier offerings of this or any other class
• Soliciting help from an online source where not all potential respondents are subject to the UCLA Student Conduct Code
• Receiving from another person (other than a CS 31 instructor or a CS 31 TA or a CS 31 LA) a code fragment that solves any portion of a programming assignment
• Writing for or with another student a code fragment that solves any portion of a programming assignment
• Helping the same person find problems with their code more than a few times for a particular assignment

Be especially careful about giving a copy of your work to a friend who "just wants to look at it to get some ideas". Frequently, that friend ends up panicking and simply copies your work, thus betraying you and putting you through the hassle of an academic discipline hearing.

You must abide by this policy in addition to the policies expressed in the UCLA Student Conduct Code. In accordance with University procedures, we will submit cases of suspected violations of this policy to the Dean.