“On my honor, as a student, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this academic work.” - K-State Honor Pledge
Plagiarism is a very serious concern in this course, and something that we do not take lightly. Computer programs and code are especially easy targets for plagiarism due to how easy it is to copy and manipulate code in such a way that it is unrecognizable as the original source but still performs correctly.
At its core, plagiarism is taking someone else’s work and passing it off as your own without giving appropriate credit to the original source. As a student at K-State, you are bound by the K-State Honor Code not to accept any unauthorized aid, and this includes plagiarized code.
When it comes to plagiarism in computer code, there is a fine line between using resources appropriately and copying code. In this program, you should strive to avoid plagiarism issues by doing the following:
In general, copying or adapting small pieces of code to perform auxiliary functions in the assignment is permitted. Copying or adapting code that is the general goal of the assignment should be avoided. For example, if the assignment is to create a bubble sort algorithm, you should write the algorithm from scratch yourself since that is the goal of the assignment. If the assignment is to create a program for displaying data that you feel should be sorted, you may choose to adapt an existing sorting algorithm for your needs (or use one from a library).
Additionally, asking for direct assistance on a project in this course, or posting any part of the problem statement, starter code, or model solution to online sites such as Chegg or StackOverflow will be considered seeking unauthorized aid and considered a violation of the K-State Honor Code. In fact, we view this as even more serious than accidentally stumbling on parts of a solution while researching a project - in this case, you are clearly intending to cheat on the project, and will be subject to sanctions under the honor code.
If you aren’t sure about whether it is OK to use an online resource or piece of code in this course, please contact the instructors. You will not get in trouble for asking, and it will help you determine what the best course of action is. Plagiarism can really only occur when you submit the assignment for grading, so you are welcome to ask for clarification or a judgement on whether a particular usage is acceptable at any time before you submit the assignment.
Codio has features that will compare your submissions against those of your fellow students. Any submissions with a high degree of similarity may be subjected to additional scrutiny by the instructors to determine if plagiarism has occurred.
In this course, any violation of the K-State Honor Code will result in a 0 on that assignment and a report made to the K-State Honor Council, as well as any additional sanctions imposed by the K-State Honor Council or the instructor, up to an immediate grade of XF in the course.
For more information on the K-State Honor & Integrity system, please visit their website, which is linked in the resources section below this video.