Fall 2015 UMBC CMSC202 Computer Science II, Section 6

Projects and Academic Conduct

In this class, all programming projects must be completed by your own individual effort. You should never have a copy of someone else's project (in part or in whole) either on paper or electronically under any circumstance. Also, you should never give a copy of your project, either on paper or electronically, to another student. This also means that you cannot "work" on the project together. Cases of academic dishonesty will be dealt with severely.

Thus, you should:

• Understand that having someone else's project (even a small part) in your possession, even briefly, is considered cheating.

• Safeguard your account password; you are responsible for the actions of anyone else you may allow to log into your account.

• Safeguard hard copies of your programs; excuses such as "I must have left a copy of my code in the lab where someone else must have found it" will not be accepted.

If you need help with your project, see your instructor or a TA. TA office hours are pooled for this course. You may see any TA for CMSC&mbsp;202, not just the TA for your discussion section.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of Academic Integrity violations:

• Emailing code in whole or in part
• Instant Messaging code in whole or in part
• Posting or obtaining code in whole or in part on the web, including but not limited to forums and newsgroups
• Not taking the appropriate measures to protect your source code, including:
• Placing your code in a public directory
• Failing to lock your screen when away from your computer
• Allowing someone to copy code from your monitor
• Giving your password to another student

The following behaviors are not Academic Integrity violations and are, in fact, encouraged:

• Asking a fellow student how they approached a problem
• Brainstorming with fellow students
• Helping a fellow student locate a bug in their code
• Getting help with your code from an Instructor, TA, or LRC tutor.

Your project will be checked for similarities with all other student projects. If your project is found to be "substantially similar" to that of another student, or if it is determined that someone else wrote your project for you, then at a minimum you and the other student (if applicable) will receive a grade of zero for that project and a 10 point deduction in your semester average. Furthermore, all parties concerned will have their prior projects re-checked for cheating. Any second incident will result in a grade of 'F' for the semester. Also, checking for cheating may occur at any time during the semester. Therefore, if you cheated on Project 1, you may be confronted about that at any time; receiving a grade for a project does not mean you are "in the clear".

All incidents of academic misconduct will be reported to the University's Academic Conduct Committee for further action, which may include, but is not limited to, academic suspension or dismissal from the university.

The full text of the Student Academic Conduct Policy is available from the UMBC Policies site.