Policy on Academic Integrity

The University of Alberta is committed to the highest standards of academic integrity and honesty. Students are expected to be familiar with these standards regarding academic honesty and to uphold the policies of the University in this respect. Students are particularly urged to familiarize themselves with the provisions of the Code of Student Behaviour and avoid any behaviour which could potentially result in suspicions of cheating, plagiarism, misrepresentation of facts and/or participation in an offence. Academic dishonesty is a serious offence and can result in suspension or expulsion from the University.

Guidelines for Academic Integrity in Dr. Jonathan Mohr's Computing Science Classes

All work submitted for grading must be your own, unless a group of students have arranged with the instructor in advance to complete a given assignment as a group project. Programs that appear to be the same, to have been derived from a common source, or to have been fraudulently obtained or created by any means will be given a failing grade.

Some of the practices which are regarded as inappropriate academic behaviour (academic dishonesty) are:

• submitting someone else's work as your own;
• writing or creating a work in the knowledge that it will be fraudulently submitted by someone else as his or her own (whether or not you receive payment);
• altering someone else's work (e.g., by changing the variable names) to conceal the fact that it was fraudulently obtained and submitted;
• using portions of another person's work (including algorithms or code from textbooks, magazines, or other sources) without acknowledgment.

Students are encouraged to assist one another in completing assignments, especially by explaining concepts to each other, by helping one another to learn the use of system utilities and programming environments, and by assisting each other in locating bugs. However, in order to avoid inadvertently becoming involved in a case of academic dishonesty (for example, when another student submits a program which is suspiciously similar to yours), you are advised to:

• protect your computer account with a secure password, changed frequently;
• ensure that copies of your program or work-in-progress are securely recycled or shredded;
• discuss programming principles and techniques with other students, not particular lines of code.

Links

Jonathan Mohr's home page

Dr. Mohr's current courses