Academic Dishonesty-When Is It REALLY Cheating?

ConcernedStudent asks: "Recently, 10 of my fellow classmates have been brought up on academic dishonesty charges in a senior level engineering class concerning a recent programming project. Granted, some copied other code verbatim and deserve to be caught, probably moreso for just being that stupid. However, there are those who have been implicated because they referenced code of somewhat dissimilar projects from previous semesters at some point during their design process. As long as the old code was not passed off as their own work for a grade and does not appear in the final draft of the code, is this really considered dishonest? How is this different than referencing a book on the language or some other "legitimate" source? At what point does referencing outside sources become dishonest? Is it just to review historical copies of code (using JFS) which were not submitted for grading to see if questionable code exists in these intermedite draft copies of the program? As this is a somewhat grey area, hopefully someone out there has comments which may help to clarify some of the uncertainty."

Comments

Re:Reuse should be encouraged.

[locust]

In academia, specifically, when it is a class project, the purpose is to teach the students how to do things, rather than just grab someone else's code. The focus is not on saving time and money, but on learning how to do things themselves.

In academia (especially undergraduate) the focus is to expose the student to subject at hand so that they know where they have to look when they really have to do something. If one really wanted them to learn to do things one wouldn't throw a half dozen new subjects at them every 4 months.

Using someone else's code, even if only for a portion of the code, is having someone else do it for them. Thus, it is considered cheating.

Usually, even in accademia knowing who to ask and what to ask are just as (if not more) important than being able to do it yourself. The fact is that every prof/t.a./lab tech assumes his course is the only one in the curriculum, and you as the student should have more than enough time to gain the same level of understanding as he has after 20 years of teaching the course. Of course if he's a prof he'd rather be doing research anyway so you (as a student) are just an inconvenience.

--locust

Reuse should be encouraged.

[sacherjj]

The reuse of previous solutions should be ENCOURAGED. However, it must be fully documented as to the source. This is how the real world works. If someone has engineered a solution, it is almost always cheaper to utilize that solution and pay the licensing fees or purchase rights to the code.

If it was cited works, tell the professors to step out of acadamia and get in the REAL WORLD. The only way they have grounds is if it was stated or implied that all code should be the students work.

In my job, I try to produce as many common function code sections as possible. I then add these to a common database for others to use and modify to their needs. Re-inventing the wheel is not only stupid, it is in efficient. Engineers are lazy. Efficiency is king.

Re:Reuse should be encouraged.

[Freeptop]

In the real world, re-use is excellent, because it is efficient, saves time, and saves costs. In academia, specifically, when it is a class project, the purpose is to teach the students how to do things, rather than just grab someone else's code. The focus is not on saving time and money, but on learning how to do things themselves. After all, if the student only learns to grab somebody else's code, and not write their own version, they can face a couple of problems:
1) If they encounter a situation where they can't re-use code, and they never learned how to write it, now what do they do? Granted, this is an extreme example, but it can and does happen.
2) If the code they re-use has undocumented bugs in it, or was originally meant for a different purpose, blindly re-using the code can do more harm than good. This is an extremely likely situation (especially with student code!).

Remember, the purpose of assignments is to teach how to solve problems by example. By giving the student direct experience in how to solve the problem, the student learns more than just what's in the book or someone else's comments.

Classes are not meant to duplicate the real world. If they were, there would not be any purpose to them; we would all just need to go straight into the real world. Classes are supposed to be used to teach students how to solve problems. That means getting them to do it themselves, and not having someone do it for them. Using someone else's code, even if only for a portion of the code, is having someone else do it for them. Thus, it is considered cheating.
At least, when I was a TA, that is how I would have considered it.

Non-collaboration policy

[josecuervo]

CS at Brown University follows a strict non-collaboration policy. It is much more rigid than any other department at the school. If caught, all incidents are forwarded directly to a dean for disciplinary action. In the engineering department, the rules are much less harsh, and collaboration often takes place.

This non-collaboration policy actually works, as Brown has one of the top cs programs in the nation. However, at times it is a bit excessive. Personally, I think that whether or not your case is truly academic dishonesty depends on the guidlines for the assignment. If they strictly said that all work should be your own, then referencing other work probably should be considered cheating.

True, when writing a paper for say, Political Science, you are referencing outside sources constantly, perhaps even quoting. However, you do this to build your own argument, and only do it to support what you are writing. Copying a whole chapter for a paper without citing references is obviously plagiarism, however even with a reference the work isn't your own, and the problems here are quite obvious. Truthfully, it depends on how much code was used, and in what manner. I don't think there is any cut and dry or black and white answer to this question.

-Brian Singer

Two simple rules

[vlax]

I learned two rules for avoiding charges of cheating in my CS department, both of which strike me as pretty sound:

1 - You can't be punished for citing references.

If you get code from some source and you document it, you say so when you turn it in, it isn't cheating. You may not get a very good grade and your prof may not be pleased, but you can't be brought up on charges of cheating.

2 - The Gilligan's Island rule

If you look at someone else's code, then go watch an episode of Gilligan's Island. Anything you can still remember afterwards is fair use. This was treated as a way of defining the line between copying someone else's code and learning from it. As rule, it won't save you in a court of law, but unless you have superhuman memory, you will be hard pressed to remember enough detail about someone else's work to be demonstrably cheating from it.

I have never heard of a student using these policies ever having been charged with academic improprieties. They are much, much easier to follow than the rules for when you can and can't sleep with profs and TA's.

Cheating is a part of academia

[JanneM]

I appreciate the fact that one is supposed to work out their own solution to problem posed in class or on assignments. However, there is a form of academic cheating that is rampant throughout the university world.

A little more than a year ago, the pages of Science where alive with the debate over whether a certain professor had published erroneous results or not. The case was as follows: his graduate student had been doing a series of experiments, and published a couple of papers on this -- with the professor as the first author. Some of you may not know this, but the tradition is that the person responsible for most of the work is cited first, followed by others, and, sometimes, followed by the professor (or other 'grey eminence') last.

In this case, it turned out that the graduate student had faked his data to fit with his theory. The professor -- who had been the first name on the paper -- excused himself by saying that he had not even read the paper in question.

So, either he did read the paper, examined the results, and published anyway, and is guilty of fraud; or he had his name as the first author of a paper he didn't even read until it blew up in his face.

This _really_ makes you wonder about scientinsts that have hundreds of papers to their name -- papers that are really the basis of their careers...

An ex-T.A. speaks out...

[chipuni]

I always went by the phrase:

• If you copy it, and you don't give attribution, it's stealing.
• If you copy it, and you give attribution, it's research.

Academics is filled with research, including computer science. Your question didn't tell whether you gave a full and clear attribution of where you found the code.

If you did, then at a hearing, bring in just about any academic journal, and show how every paper references at least five other papers.

The Sad Truth About Higher Education and Cheating

[Ars-Fartsica]

As someone who spent two years as a teaching assistant in a well known university, that students are in university to get high marks, not to get an education.

I once held an informal poll among the undergrads and concluded that almost all of them chose courses they could get high marks in, and almost all of them would opt to get a high mark than to focus on learning.

As for cheating - what do you expect? The whole educational experience is driven by marks, so cheating is a natural by-product. Some schools try to get around this by focusing on examinations instead of assignments for the bulk of the course marks, but it has been demonstrated again and again that exams only teach one thing - how to do well on exams.

The only way to get technical education back on track is to make co-operative/work terms mandatory, even for students who wish to pursue theoretical avenues.