Academic Dishonesty Policy

Academic Dishonesty

Academic dishonesty includes such behavior as

copying the work of a fellow student and presenting it as one's own;
unauthorized collaboration;
plagiarism;
talking during an exam;
reading a classmate's computer monitor during an online exam;
helping a fellow student cheat, for example, by doing the other student's assignment for him/her.

For more on this topic, see the Niagara University Undergraduate Catalog entry for "Academic Honesty"
the NU Academic Integrity Policy

Collaboration Between Programming Students (CIS 232 students may skip this section)

Collaboration is a difficult issue for students of computer programming. There's a lot of value in students helping each other. I wish to encourage such help, as long as it's really help for the receiving student to learn programming. It's highly unlikely that when student X writes a piece of code for student Y, the latter learns much other than to get X to do Y's work. When X and Y submit dozens or even hundreds of lines of identical code not taken from public domain sources (such as class notes), it will be regarded as unauthorized collaboration unless the assignment calls for collaboration. When X helps Y find and correct an isolated error in Y's code, Y is likely to learn something about programming; such activity will be regarded as legitimate help.

Code presented in class discussions will generally be considered in the public domain - i.e., available to students for use in their projects.

Grading Policy

A student found guilty of academic dishonesty will be punished for his/her misdeed as follows. Your score for the assignment or exam on which the cheating occurs will be given by the formula

min(-10% of possible score, unpenalized score - 75% of possible score) where "min" is the minimum. Notice this means you will end up with a negative score if you're guilty of cheating; the highest score you can get if you cheat is 10% of the possible score below 0. This is so that if you're so poorly prepared that honest effort would result in a very low score, you won't be tempted to think you have nothing to lose by cheating.

For example, if a student is caught cheating on a homework assignment for which there are 40 possible points, then the highest possible score is -10%*40 = -4 (negative 4). If the student has, say, an unpenalized score of 20 points, the student's grade will be

min(-10%*40, 20 - 75%*40) = min(-4, 20 - 30) = min(-4, -10) = -10 (negative 10) out of 40.

To course syllabi
To Boxer's home page