Important message on plagiarism
The single most important point for you to realize before the beginning of your studies at ShanghaiTech is the meaning of "plagiarism":
Plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own. It is the misrepresentation of the work of another as your own. It is academic theft; a serious infraction of a University honor code, and the latter is your responsibility to uphold. Instances of plagiarism or any other cheating will be reported to the university leadership, and will have serious consequences. Avoiding any form of plagiarism is in your own interest. If you plagiarize and it is unveiled at a later stage only, it will not only reflect badly on the university, but also on your image/career opportunities.
Plagiarism is academic misconduct, and we take it very serious at ShanghaiTech. In the past we have had lots of problems related to plagiarism especially with newly arriving students, so it is important to get this right upfront:
You may ...
- ... discuss with your peers about course material.
- ... discuss generally about the programming language, some features, or abstract lines of code. As long as it is not directly related to any homework, but formulated in a general, abstract way, such discussion is acceptable.
- ... share test cases with each other.
- ... help each other with setting up the development environment, etc.
You may not ...
- ... read, possess, copy or submit the solution code of anyone else (including people outside this course or university)!
- ... receive direct help from someone else (i.e. a direct communication of some lines of code, no matter if it is visual, verbal, or written)!
- ... give direct help to someone else. Helping one of your peers by letting him read your code or communicating even just part of the solution in written or in verbal form will have equal consequences.
- ... gain access to another one’s account, no matter if with or without permission.
- ... give your account access to another student. It is your responsibility to keep your account safe, always log out, and choose a safe password. Do not just share access to your computer with other students without prior lock‐out and disabling of automatic login functionality. Do not just leave your computer on without a lock even if it is just for the sake of a 5‐minute break.
- ... work in teams. You may meet to discuss generally about the material, but any work on the homework is to be done individually and in privacy. Remember, you may not allow anyone to even just read your source code.
With the Internet, "paste", and "share" are easy operations. Don’t think that it is easy to hide and that we will not find you. We have just as easy to use, fully automatic and intelligent tools that will identify any potential cases of plagiarism. And do not think that being the original author will make any difference. Sharing an original solution with others is just as unethical as using so meone else’s work.