At the end of the quarter, we run analytic software over all CS106B submissions to find sections of student-submitted code that have been copied from elsewhere rather than independently written by the student. A staffer then reviews the situation to determine appropriate followup. With a correct understanding of the authorship, we can ensure that credit is being awarded properly. Accurate attribution of code authorship is an important tenet of the programming community and of academic integrity in general.
Permissible assistance
The course policy on collaboration and the Honor Code allows students to exchange ideas with others, but not to share or copy code. If you are in office hours or discussing the assignment with other students and the conceptual ideas behind a few lines of code are jointly sketched, it is fine to learn from those ideas and incorporate them into your assignment. Your assignment might also take inspiration from a code example in lecture, section, or the textbook. Both of these situations are within the spirit of exchanging ideas, learning from others, but writing the code yourself. This help is entirely permissible, but please be sure to cite any direct influence. The code you submit is still distinctly your own and you retain full authorship; the citation simply acknowledges the work of others that influenced your code.
Unpermissible assistance
In contrast, an honor code violation looks more like having access to solution code (such as code found on the Internet, written by another current or past student, or generated by an AI tool) and basing your submission off of it, whether reusing an exact copy or borrowing code sections from it and remixing. Submitting this code – with or without citation! – is a misrepresentation of authorship and is a breach of academic integrity —code written by another is being passed off your own. This is unacceptable, and the CS department has become adept at identifying instances of misrepresented authorship using sophisticated tools.
Unpermitted collaboration/partnership
There is yet a third category where two current students work together and both submit the same/similar code based on the joint work. Submitting such work – with or without acknowledging the contributions of another – is also a violation of the CS106B Honor Code.
The Regret Clause
If upon reflection, you believe you have (perhaps mistakenly) engaged in a violation of the Honor Code, you may invoke the Regret Clause within 72 hours of an assignment's original deadline. To do so, keep an eye out for the announcement we will post on Ed after each assignment deadline with a link to the Regret Clause form for that assignment.
If you're ever unsure how to proceed, please reach out to Sean, Jonathan, or Yasmine. We very much appreciate those of you who want to do the right thing, and we will gladly meet for a constructive, non-judgmental review of what has happened and to discuss the best way forward.