What is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is the presentation of the thoughts or work of another as ones own.

In this course it is expected that you will involve yourself in considerable discussion with your fellow students and conduct a significant amount of research —-using a variety of sources, including the Library (books/journals) and the Internet.

However, you must be careful not to submit the work of anyone else as your own. Please make sure that all sources are correctly cited. Use of another person’s work from any source without proper acknowledgement is plagiarism; this is a serious academic offence.

The Learning Centre website is main repository for resources for staff and students on plagiarism and academic honesty. These resources can be located via: http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/plagiarism. The Learning Centre also provides substantial educational written materials, workshops, and tutorials to aid students, for example, in:

• correct referencing practices;
• paraphrasing, summarising, essay writing, and time management;
• appropriate use of, and attribution for, a range of materials including text, images, formulae and concepts.

Individual assistance is available on request from The Learning Centre. Students are also reminded that careful time management is an important part of study and one of the identified causes of plagiarism is poor time management. Students should allow sufficient time for research, drafting, and the proper referencing of sources in preparing all assessment items.

Copying assignments is unacceptable. Assignments will be checked. The penalties for copying range from receiving no marks for the assignment, through receiving a mark of 00 FL for the course, to expulsion from UNSW (for repeat offenders). Allowing someone to copy your work counts as plagiarism, even if you can prove that it is your work.

Further details of the School plagiarism policy can be found here. (You acknowledged receipt of these rules when you obtained your CSE computer account, and the link above is for your convenience so that you can review the rules now.)

We are aware that a lot of learning takes place in student discussion, and don’t wish to discourage that activity. However, it is important, for both those helping others and those being helped, not to provide/accept any assignment code in writing, as this is apt to be used exactly as is, and lead to plagiarism penalties for both the supplier and the copier of the codes. Write something on a piece of paper, by all means, but tear it up/take it away when the discussion is over.

In brief, and for the purposes of this course, plagiarism includes copying or obtaining all, or a substantial part, of the material for your assignment, whether programming language code, or written or graphical report material —without written acknowledgement— in your assignment from:

1. a location on the internet;
2. a book, article or other written document (whether published or unpublished) whether electronic or on paper or other medium;
3. another student, whether in your class or another class;
4. a non-student (e.g. from someone who writes assignments for money)

Note that if you copy code or other material from any source then the marks you get will be at the marker’s discretion, and will reflect the marker’s perception of the amount of work you put into finding and/or adapting the code, and the degree to which you understand the code.

Note also that there is a big difference between being able to understand someone else’s solution, and developing a solution yourself. A software engineer has to be able to develop solutions from scratch. Assignments provide opportunities for you to develop the skills necessary to develop your own solutions. Use these opportunities!