How to Avoid Plagiarism for Computer Codes....forstudents

Wed May 21 10:22:48 EDT 2014

Here's a pointer to Stanford's Computer Science Honor Code, which discusses
plagiarism:  http://cs.stanford.edu/degrees/ug/HonorCode.shtml

I taught and graded for programming courses a while back. I'd have to say
the most blatant plagiarism involved taking a card deck (I taught a *long*
time ago!), changing the job control cards, and submitting the old set of
cards as their own. Given this was for a COBOL class, the people involved
forgot that there's what's called the "identification division" where the
students placed cards that had their name and what section they were in.
The students who were cheating didn't bother to change those.

A lot of Computer Science and programming courses will repeat the same
homework assignment for years. That makes it awfully tempting for a student
to copy and paste in a previous student's code, change the identification,
and turn it in as their own. The closest analogy would be a student
changing the title page on a paper and turning it in as their work.  Then
there are students who will program as a group when they shouldn't be doing
so, and each turn in the same code. In most cases I've seen, either copying
from a previous semester, or sharing code are what's being checked for
plagiarism.

Some take it further than that, and want to know what parts of the code did
you write, what parts did you reuse from a class you previously took, and
what you received help on, or used from a book. This is both instilling
good programming practices, and making sure that the work turned in is
properly cited.

Laurie

On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 6:46 AM, Cabus, Michael <CabusM at philau.edu> wrote:

>  Hi
>
> I re-read my response, and need to revise my “code”.
>
>
>
> I meant to say, if students send a code sample* without* citing it, it
> will look sloppy.  Which shows details are important, but a rare commodity.
> Writing that was a lesson to me as a programmer—it is easy to get into bad
> habits, but articulating what you value helps you get out of them (creating
> and academic writing, and programmer are a great pair, like peanut butter
> and jelly, but that is a different topic).
>
>
>
> Hope everyone is well,
>
>
>
> Michael
>
>
>
>
>
> Systems Librarian, Paul J. Gutman Library
>
> Philadelphia University
>
> Phone. 215.951.5365
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Web technologies in libraries [mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU] *On
> Behalf Of *William Gunn
> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 21, 2014 9:07 AM
>
> *To:* WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> *Subject:* Re: [WEB4LIB] How to Avoid Plagiarism for Computer
> Codes....forstudents
>
>
>
> I were teaching the class, I would point out that almost all coding
> they'll do professionally with copy liberally from others. You do need to
> explain about licenses, of course.
>
> If you want to make sure they understand how to write a loop or something,
> you can ask them to not copy for the purposes of the exercise, and penalize
> those who do copy for not following instructions, but please don't confuse
> things by bringing plagiarism into it. It really is a meaningless concept
> in this domain.
>
> Just my $0.02...
>
> William Gunn | Head of Academic Outreach, Mendeley | +1 650 614 1749
> http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/william-gunn
>
> On May 21, 2014 2:33 PM, "Hockenberry, Benjamin" <bhockenberry at sjfc.edu>
> wrote:
>
>  The second example given in the UPenn "Avoiding Plagiarism:  Writing
> Computer Code" you mentioned (
> http://www.upenn.edu/academicintegrity/ai_computercode.html) seems to
> define code plagiarism in a disconcerting way.  The code in "Unacceptable
> example 2" shares *meaning* (does this mean “function?”) with the example
> in the textbook, but its structure is significantly different.
>
>
>
> I would be very averse to such a plagiarism detection system if it were
> implemented programmatically.  There are many ways to write a while loop,
> but the discussion at the U Penn site says that logical equivalency (in a
> sense, “meaning”) equals plagiarism.  The similarity between student
> responses to a common assignment (like looping through an array) would
> cause every student to fail such a plagiarism test, and under many academic
> institutions’ academic integrity policies, this could be grounds for
> dismissal after only one or two occurrences.
>
>
>
> Attribution should be given in code, yes.  But I’m wary of this “structure
> and meaning” argument when it comes to functional similarities.  Is this
> discussion precipitated by the Oracle-Google lawsuits, Joyce?
>
>
>
> Ben Hockenberry, Systems Librarian
>
> Lavery Library, St. John Fisher College | 3690 East Avenue, Rochester, NY
> 14618
>
> (585) 385-8382 | bhockenberry at sjfc.edu
>
>
>
> *From:* Web technologies in libraries [mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU] *On
> Behalf Of *James MacDonald
> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 21, 2014 8:19 AM
> *To:* WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> *Subject:* Re: [WEB4LIB] How to Avoid Plagiarism for Computer
> Codes....forstudents
>
>
>
> I must disagree... the use of other people's work should be cited
> including coding. Here is a nice academic integrity handbook from MIT:
>
>
>
> https://integrity.mit.edu/writing-code
>
>
>
> There are times when citing is not necessary - such as factual common
> knowledge - for example, the capital of Canada is Ottawa. Neither would you
> cite say a for loop for iterating through and array.
>
>
>
> Attribution should be given where it is due even for those small snippets
> of code (without which your code would be useless).
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *James MacDonald  *Web Services Librarian
> University Library
>
>
>
> Tel +971 6 515 2270
> Fax  +971 6 558 5008
>
>  American University of Sharjah
> PO Box 26666, Sharjah
> United Arab Emirates
> http://www.aus.edu
> jmacdonald at aus.edu
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On May 21, 2014, at 3:48 PM, Forrest, Stuart <sforrest at BCGOV.NET> wrote:
>
>
>
>  Yes the whole point of modern programming is code reuse.
>
> Stuart Forrest PhD
> Beaufort County Library
> Beaufort
> South Carolina
> 843 255 6450
> For Learning, For Liesure, For Life.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On May 21, 2014, at 6:31 AM, "Riley Childs" <riley at TFSGEO.COM<
> mailto:riley at TFSGEO.COM <riley at TFSGEO.COM>>> wrote:
>
> +1
> Most of the time coding takes bits and pieces, sometimes even entire
> files! Do you mean citing your sources per se?
>
> Riley Childs
> Student
> Asst. Head of IT Services
> Charlotte United Christian Academy
> (704) 497-2086
> RileyChilds.net <http://rileychilds.net/><http://RileyChilds.net<http://rileychilds.net/>
> >
> Sent from my Windows Phone, please excuse mistakes
> ________________________________
> From: William Gunn<mailto:william.gunn at MENDELEY.COM<william.gunn at MENDELEY.COM>
> >
> Sent: ‎5/‎21/‎2014 4:15 AM
> To: WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU<mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU<WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU>
> >
> Subject: Re: [WEB4LIB] How to Avoid Plagiarism for Computer
> Codes....forstudents
>
> Joyce, there's no concept of plagiarism in writing software that I'm aware
> of.
>
> Did you mean a different kind of programming code?
>
> --
> William Gunn | Head of Academic Outreach, Mendeley | @mrgunn
> http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/william-gunn | (650) 614-1749
>
>
> On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 2:59 PM, Joyce Wong <joyce.wong at langara.bc.ca<
> mailto:joyce.wong at langara.bc.ca <joyce.wong at langara.bc.ca>>> wrote:
> Hi everyone
>
> Apologies for any duplication.
>
> Does anyone have an online guide on avoiding plagiarism specifically on
> programming codes for students?  Our Computer Science Department is
> interested in developing one and I'd rather not re-invent the wheel.
> I have already found the page from University Pennsylvania.
>
> Thank you
> Joyce
>
> --
> Joyce Wong
> Coordinator of User Experience
> Langara College Library. 100 West 49th Avenue, Vancouver, BC, V5Y 2Z6
> T: 604-323-5047<tel:604-323-5047 <604-323-5047>>
> F: 604-323-5512<tel:604-323-5512 <604-323-5512>>
> joyce.wong at langara.bc.ca<mailto:joyce.wong at langara.bc.ca<joyce.wong at langara.bc.ca>
> >
>
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