Policy on Collaboration CS 139 Fall 2008 Programming Assignments - all sections


See general notes about programming tasks.

The programming assignments for the most part should be viewed as take home exams. Ideally, they will be done with no assistance from others. However, when help is needed for a specific task, some approved help sources may be used as described below. Different tasks may have different sources and degrees of help permitted.

Approved Sources for Any Task

The faculty member teaching your section of JMU's Fall 2008 CS 139 course, the student assistants for any of the Fall 2008 CS 139 sections, the course textbook, and the CD that comes with the textbook are your official "help resources". (Because of differences in the sections and because of the importance of establishing a relationship with your section's instructor, you should not seek help from other CS 139 instructors. Your instructor is available during office hours and is also available outside those hours by appointment. If you need assistance, it is an important responsibility of yours to seek out and arrange to meet with your faculty member.) Any assistance from an official help resource is permitted.

Any help from your faculty member does not require citation. General assistance from the course textbooks or CD that comes with the textbooks also does not need to be cited. Paraphrasing or isomorphic-copying of code from the textbooks or CD-ROM must be cited in the code in which the copy has taken place and in the general comments for that program. Help from the student assistants must be cited in the References and Acknowledgements section of the program header. The note should indicate which TA helped you and with which section(s) of the code they assisted.

Assistance from Other Sources: Not Permitted

Assistance from all other sources (other students in the class, other students not currently taking the class, internet sources, etc) is generally not permitted unless explicitly specified otherwise in the particular programming assignment. Any paraphrasing or copying of any code from sources other than those listed above will be grounds for a 0 in the assignment and if not cited may also result in an honor code violation at your professor's discretion. A student should never show his or her code to another student.

Any degree of assistance of any scope on Program Design, Code Creation, or Testing and Debugging from any source other than the official help resources is not permitted. For example, if you are stuck on how to design a solution for a particular part of your program, it is not permissible to go to another student for help, but it is permissible for you to go to your faculty member for direction. The only exception to this policy is if you are researching background information for a programming assignment during your design phase. For example, you need to do a temperature conversion as part of the programming assignment. You will need to find out what the conversion factors are. Outside research for this fact is allowed. It must be clearly cited where you received your information. Use of fellow students to find such facts is not permitted.


Updated 07/15/08