Plagiarism and Collusion

Please note: the School takes plagiarism extremely seriously. In all work, the burden of guilt lies on you -- it is up to you to prove yourself innocent by fully referencing sources in your work.

In software coding, the use of standard examples makes it hard to define plagiarism. Source code where every other line is a reference is not wanted. However, it is important to refer to sources for major chunks of code.

A rule of thumb is that if you use more than 5 lines of someone else's code, you should add a reference to where you got it in a comment above it. If you have had to alter the code to get it to work, you should also note that.

Most code you find on the web will have been put there for you to use, or to help you understand how to handle a problem. If, however, the code has a licence attached to it, or has a copyright statement on it, you must respect these. Even if it means comprehending pages of legal verbage.

In addition, it is worth pointing out the issue of collusion. There may be times when you are stuck on debugging some code and could do with a fresh pair of eyes to see what the problem is.

When this is an occasional fair exchange of information between equals, this is a valuable relationship. It is good practce to review code and have other people look over and use/test it. However, there is also a clear difference between doing this, and working on a project together and turning in a group project, when an individual effort is what is wanted. Such collusion is regarded just as seriously as plagiarism.

No one wants to stop you talking to other people about code, but please limit this to discussion about specific bugs and generic coding issues raised during the course, not project-specifics unless it is a group project.

Please don't ask for help too much from others, staff are here to field queries and help you. If you are being asked for help too much, then try to politely decline and contact the course convenor in confidence if you have concerns.

Please also note: the use of coding forums to request external help is strictly forbidden unless permission is sought from the module convener first.

While there is a place for forums for advanced programmers in the real world, getting experts to do your university assignment work for you is malpractice. Even if you are honest about where the material has come from, we don't want forums filling with basic queries about assessments from our courses. If you are stuck, please ask for advice from your course tutors.

Do not sub-contract projects out to other programmers. The repecussions are severe.

If you have submitted code before for assessment on another course and are using it unchanged, then please make this clear.

Finally, please note that automatically generated code may *not* be submitted as the main body of an assessment unless it is clearly stated that this is allowed.

The purpose of projects and practicals in courses that aim to help you to learn to code is to give you the opportunity to practice. You won't learn well or get very far without practice.

If you approach it from this angle, your code will reflect this enthusiasm, and, ultimately, even if it doesn't do exactly what it should, it is still more than likely you'll do better than if the entire thing is obviously constructed from other sources without understanding.