Honesty
Can students work together on assignments?
This is a science class, so of course, yes, collaboration and discussion is expected and encouraged!
However, each student must submit their own, individual work and may not copy words, ideas, figures, or explanations from another student’s submitted work. When you submit an assignment, you signify that all of the creative effort contained in it is yours unless otherwise cited or referenced. All of us – yes, including me – are bound by the IU Student Code for the duration of the semester.
How will that work this semester?
We'll follow three main principles:
- Rule #1 is the two-paragraph statement above.
- All graded activities and assignments, no matter the type, are "open note" and "open book" and "open what's-already-on-the-web" unless you are specifically told otherwise in the instructions.
- You are not permitted to seek or confirm answers on graded course assignments from others (for example: asking a family member; asking a former student in the course; posting to a help forum) unless you are specifically told you can do so in the instructions.
What are some examples of cheating from previous semesters?
- Two students who printed out identical homeworks -- even the same typos in the same places -- but changed the name at the top.
- Two students who printed out nearly identical homeworks -- with some of the wording changed, but the graphs and tables they produced were identical. (You could hold them up to the light and they matched perfectly.)
- Someone copied a paragraph from a Wikipedia page and claimed they wrote it.
- Someone submitted a Canvas quiz for their friend, from the same computer & IP address, 2 minutes after submitting their own.
- Someone copied the solutions to a homework I had posted on Canvas, and asked me to accept their work with a late penalty.
What happened to those students?
- In one case, the offenders refused to admit what they had done. They were referred for misconduct, the Dean gave them an "F" for the course, and then they left bad reviews about me on RMP.
- In another case, the offender admitted they had copied, took a zero on that assignment, and we moved on. They ended up with a B+ or A-, I forget.
Are those examples the only things that would ever count as cheating?
Um, no. Here are some more examples.
About this Site
This site is essentially just a landing page for the course during registration. After the semester begins, we will use Canvas as our resource area.