Retraction and Retroactive Citation Policy

Congratulations on nearing the end of the quarter! We hope that you're able to use the final exam to demonstrate your mastery of the material and leave this course with improved skills that are a satisfying reward for all your hard work!

In this course, we are committed to upholding academic integrity and our expectation is that that all work submitted for grading must be the student's authentic independent creation. Please review our course Honor Code policy on the Syllabus (under Handouts).

We are now preparing to run all submitted work through our plagiarism detection software. These tools identify passages that exhibit unusually high levels of similarity with the work from online sources, or of another student, and flags both for further review by the instructors. If a significant concern of un-permitted collaboration is found, we send the materials to the Office of Community Standards for follow-up investigation as a violation of the Honor Code. Understanding that mistakes can happen, we want to give all students an opportunity to make things right if they made a mistake.

Below we identify three categories of assistance that could apply to your code. The vast majority of student work falls into Type 0, for which there is no need for any follow-up. Code of Type 1 or Type 2 that is without citation is the concern we would like to address at this time.

Type 0: Either no assistance or assistance that does not require citation

This code was my original work, authored by me independently. This code was not derived from nor influenced by code developed by others.
I brought this code to LaIR/office hours and a member of the course staff helped me debug and understand my code.
This code was taken from published CS106A materials from this quarter such as lectures, section, textbook, YEAH slides, etc.

Type 1: Allowable assistance that requires citation

Note: this type of assistance is allowed by the honor code, and will not result in any penalty if you submit the citation form, or you have already cited it on your assignment submission. Submitting the form for Type 1 allows you to cite this allowed collaboration and give yourself peace of mind.

When working on this code, I talked with a peer to conceptualize the task, brainstorm the design, or talk through the approach to problem-solving. We never shared/read/wrote actual code, but did talk about ideas and strategies at a high-level. Our code may look similar in broad terms.

Type 2: Assistance that is not allowed

I exchanged solution code with a peer or former student.
I jointly developed this code with a peer.
I found and read solution code online and it influenced the code I wrote (or I submitted that code).
I obtained assignment code from a tutor, online forum, paid service, AI model, etc. and that influenced the code I wrote (or I submitted that code).
I gave or received aid on the midterm or final exams.

If upon reflection, you believe that some portion of your work should be amended to acknowledge assistance of Type 1 or Type 2, please fill out this form to add a retroactive citation. In order for this to protect you from an honor code case, you need to be truthful and specific about what happened. Nick and Elyse will look at these responses and work out a fair assignment score, potentially retracting the assignment entirely. This form will close on Sunday, March 17th at 11:59pm.

Please note: Filling out this form will not necessarily result in any type of penalty - we are simply using these citations when interpreting the results of our plagiarism detection software. It is completely fine to submit just for peace of mind. If you have any questions about whether to submit this form, please email Nick or Elyse, or reach out to your section leader if you'd feel more comfortable doing so.