Homework Collaboration Scenarios
These are okay:
- Late one night, after working for a few hours on your assignment, you
realize you are stuck on one particular program. Instead of working more,
and possibly not making any progress, you decide to get a good night's sleep
and visit your instructor during office hours the next day.
- After working on a program for a few hours, you realize you are stuck on
one particular concept. You look around the computer lab, find someone else
in the class, and ask them for help. After explaining what you are trying to
do, your classmate points out a flaw in your idea, and gets you started in a
new direction. After successfully completing the program, you add a comment
at the top of the code stating who you received help from.
- You had trouble with the last homework assignment, so you ask someone in
the class if they would like to work as a team on this week's assignment.
You get together well before the assignment is due to discuss your approach.
After figuring out a reasonable algorithm, you work together to type in the
program and debug it. When you are finished with the program, you put both
of your names in the comments at the top, and turn it in as a team.
These are definitely not okay:
- You had trouble with the last homework assignment, so you ask someone in
the class if they would like to work as a team on this week's assignment.
Your partner understands the material better than you do, so you decide to
split up the work: your partner's job will be to write the program and your
job will be to debug and test it. When you are finished, you put both of
your names in the comments at the top, and turn it in as a team.
- You ask someone in the class if they would like to work as a team on this
week's assignment, which consists of four programs. In order to save time,
you decide to split up the work: you will work on two of the programs and
your partner will work on the other two. When you are both finished, you
combine the programs together, put both of your names in the comments at the
top, and turn them in as a team.
- No matter what you do, you can't seem to get your program to work and are
getting very frustrated. A friend of yours comes into the computer lab who
you know has already finished the homework. You ask her for help, but since
she is busy working on an assignment for another class, she offers to print
out a copy of her code for you to look at.
- Late one night, after just starting this week's homework a few hours ago,
you realize you will never finish before the deadline. After pleading for
help from a friend of yours who has already finished the assignment, he
agrees to email you his code. After cutting and pasting parts of his code
into your own and changing some comments and variable names, you turn in the
modified code as your own, with a comment acknowledging help from your
friend.