Don't cheat

This policy statement is unfortunately necessary, thanks to the actions of a tiny minority of students. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to ask in lecture, in lab, during office hours, on Piazza, or by email.

tl;dr Be honest. Cite your sources. We mean it. If you need help, please ask. Don’t be stupid!

Our expectations

Each student (or homework group) must write their own solutions, in their own words, and must properly credit all sources.

For more information and examples, see any of the following:

• The ECE department policy
• The Provost Office’s Students’ Quick Reference Guide to Academic Integrity
• Article 1, Part 4 of the Student Code.

If you have any doubts about whether something constitutes plagiarism, talk to instructor(s) or the TAs, and err on the side of caution.

Cite your sources

We strongly encourage you to use any printed, online, or living resource at your disposal to help you solve homework problems, but you must cite your sources.

• If you use an idea from a book, cite the book.
• If you use an idea from a paper, cite the paper.
• If you use an idea from Wikipedia, cite Wikipedia.
• If you use an idea from CS StackExchange, cite CS StackExchange.
• If you use an idea from last semester’s homework solutions, cite last semester’s homework solutions.
• If you use an idea from another student, cite that student.
• If you use an idea from your mom, cite your mom.

There are only two exceptions to this rule. You are not required to cite the following:

• Official course materials (lectures, lecture notes, homework and exam solutions from this semester)
• Sources for prerequisite material (which we assume you already know by heart)

Penalties

• The default penalty for cheating on a quiz/homework problem is 1-2 full letter grade(s) off your final course grade.
• The default penalty for cheating on an exam is two full letter grades off your final course grade or automatic failure.
• The default penalty for cheating on an attendance sheet (should we choose to collect attendance) is a full letter grade off your final course grade.
• The default penalty for cheating on multiple assignments in an F in the course. Doesn’t matter if this is your first violation or your third. A consistent pattern of cheating in the course if grounds for immediate failure.
• We reserve the right to register FAIR violations at any point in the semester (even once the semester is over). FAIR violations are time-consuming for the staff so multiple cheating offenses could be included in a single violation.
• The course staff reserves the right to change the penalties however they see fit. At the end of the day cheatign offenses are varied and the staff requires flexibility to make sure that the penalties correspond to the offenses.

Don’t be an idiot. Just do the work.

LLMs not allowed LLMs are strictly forbidden from any course assignments. No it is not ok to use them for inspiration. There is a difference between google and ChatGPT. There is ample evidence that shows LLM usage dimishes learning:

[1] Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task

[2] Generative AI Can Harm Learning

I’m sure many students will vehemently disagree with me and say LLMs have helped them learn so much. To those people I respond:

[3] Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom

But maybe I’m wrong. If you truly believe LLMs improve learning outcomes, I would be happy to help you set up and perform a research project that gets quantifiable metrics regarding this issue. Till then, I’m just forbidding it. Widespread LLM usage is a big reason why I have decided to remove homeworks from the course but we got to keep marching forward.

Credit This webpage was modified from previous semester(s).