Cheating policy
Each exam and project must be the sole work of the student turning it in. Like the University as a whole and the ECE and CSD departments, we take cheating very seriously. See CMU's policies on academic integrity for more information on the University's policies, which apply fully to this course.The usual penalty for cheating in this class is to be removed from the course with a failing grade. The University also places a record of the incident in the student's permanent record.
No collaboration on exams is allowed. Unless otherwise notified, the following
guidelines dictate what non-exam collaboration is authorized and what is not.
What is Cheating?
- Sharing code or other electronic files: either by copying, retyping, looking at, or supplying a copy of a file from this or a previous semester. Also not allowed is verbal or other description of one person's code to another. Be sure to store your work in protected directories, and log off when you leave an open cluster, to prevent others from copying your work without your explicit assistance. Also, do NOT use any code repository without ensuring that it cannot be accessed by others... for example, using github in a public access mode invites others to copy your code and is not allowed.
- Sharing written assignments or exams: Looking at, copying, or supplying an assignment or exam.
- Using other's code. Using code from this or previous offerings of 746, from other courses at CMU or other institutions, or from any other non-746 source (e.g., software found on the Internet).
- Looking at other's code. Although mentioned above, it bears repeating. Looking at other students' code or allowing others to look at yours is cheating. Also, searching the web for other solutions to the projects (or code similar to a project) is cheating, as is looking at code found and looked at to understand how to complete the project. There is no notion of looking "too much," since no looking is allowed at all.
What is NOT Cheating?
- Clarifying ambiguities or vague points in class handouts or readings.
- Helping others use the computer systems, networks, compilers, debuggers, profilers, or other system facilities.
- Helping others with high-level design issues only. Algorithm implementations and other such details are not "high-level design issues".
- Helping others with high-level (not code-based) debugging.
Be sure to store your work in protected directories, and log off when you leave an open cluster to prevent others from copying your work without your explicit assistance. Do not use publicly accessible code repositories or revision control systems; make sure that only you can access your code. If you are going to host your code on Github, make sure you use a private repository, and be warned that two years after your student status expires, Github will be converting your private repositories to public, so be sure to remove your code. Academic integrity policies extend beyond the duration of your studies.
We understand that the web is a popular tool for everyone (including students) seeking to better understand and solve problems. Because the line between cheating and such explorations has been reached by some in the past, we ask all students to explicitly list websites on which they relied in developing their solutions. And, we reiterate for enphasis: looking at or relying on implementations found on the web is considered cheating.
Last updated: 2017-01-20 02:06:54 -0500