COMP101 - NOTES FOR STUDENTS REGARDING PLAGIARISM AND COLLABORATION

1. INTRODUCTION

Unfortunately, it occasionally happens on COMP101 (and other University modules) that cases of plagiarism and unauthorised collaboration occur. In the broad context of the programmes on offer by the Computer Science (CS) Department definitions, and details of the consequences in the event of plagiarism and unauthorised collaboration can be found in the Computer Science Handbook. However, so that all COMP101 students are clear as to the nature and consequences of plagiarism and unauthorised collaboration with respect to COMP101 practicals, the following should be noted.

2. PLAGIARISM

For the purposes of COMP101, plagiarism is the practise of fraudulently presenting someone else's practical work as one's own without the knowledge of the owner. Plagiarism is viewed as a very serious offence in all academic circles. Any COMP101 student found plagiarising somebody else's work, i.e. submitting work that is not their own (for example obtained from the WWW), will be awarded a mark of 0 for the practical in question. Any further instances will result in the student failing the module.

3. COLLABORATION

The exchange of ideas and knowledge amongst students is seen as an important, and perfectly legitimate, aspect of University life and is therefore encouraged. It is fully expected that such exchange of ideas may extend to more able students assisting less able students. In some case the nature of the exchange of ideas between students can be more accurately described as collaboration, for example where small groups of students decide to "work together" on a COMP101 practical assignment. Such collaboration is seen as legitimate provided that:

1. Identical (or very similar) submissions or parts of submissions are not produced.
2. The collaboration is acknowledged by including a phrase of the form "This work was completed in collaboration with X, Y and Z" prominently on the front page of your submission.

Collaboration should not extend to students emailing each other (or passing on by some other means) solutions to practicals.

In cases of legitimate collaboration (fully acknowledged and without identical submissions) the work of the students involved will not normally attract a penalty.

In cases of acknowledged collaboration where students have produced identical work a penalty will be applied; however, in recognition that the collaboration has been acknowledged, this will not usually result in students obtaining a mark of 0. Repeat occurrences however will result in a 0 mark.

4. UNAUTHORISED COLLABORATION

Plagiarism, as defined above, is a very rare occurrence on COMP101. In circumstances where a student X is found to have submitted an identical piece of work to that of a student Y this has usually been done with at least the partial collaboration or knowledge of Y. For example Y may have emailed their code to X, or supplied X with a print-out of their code. Although this is still plagiarism in the true sense of the word the work in question has not been obtained by wholly fraudulent means. Plagiarism of this kind, for the purposes of COMP101 and within the University of Liverpool, is defined as unauthorised collaboration; which, although not viewed as seriously as plagiarism, will attract a mark of 0 for all parties involved.

The following are not considered to be legitimate excuses for unauthorised collaboration:

1. Any claim to have forgotten to acknowledge the collaboration.
2. Any claim of being unaware that unauthorised collaboration was not permitted.

5. IDENTICAL CODE

Much of the above refers to the "same or similar" code. Two pieces of code are considered identical if, when passed to a similarity checker, the pieces of code are found to have a similarity index in the order of 95% or above. Similarity checkers are programs that compare programs. Such checkers use their own names for labels (such as variable names or method names), and ignore comments and the ordering of methods and field declarations. In other words, in the unlikely event of an unscrupulous COMP101 student attempting to hide the fact that they were submitting someone else's code could, changing the variable names and adding/deleting comments would not serve to avoid detection.

It is of course not impossible that two pieces of code are (say) 95% similar purely by chance, but the experience on COMP101 is that this has never happened. Typically, given any 200 submissions each comprising 2 pieces of code, there will be 400x399 comparisons (159600 in total) out of which only some 50 pieces of code will be anywhere near 90% similar.

6. EXAMPLE CASES FROM PREVIOUS YEARS

1. Student C was found to have submitted an identical piece of work to that of student R. Neither has acknowledged any collaboration. On further investigation it was found that student C had emailed their code to R. Unbeknown to C, student R had then submitted C's code as their own. C claimed that R had plagiarised their code because it had never been C's intention that R should submit the code unchanged. C's argument was not accepted --- the very fact that C had emailed their code to R indicated that they had willingly participated in the collaboration. Unauthorised collaboration was deemed to have occurred, both C and R were given a mark of 0 for the coding part of the exercise.
2. Students C, X and Z, who had acknowledged collaboration, submitted identical pieces of code although their documentation sections were different. None of the students had been involved in any unauthorised collaboration previously. A single mark for the code was obtained and divided evenly amongst the three students, i.e. they received 1/3 of the mark each.
3. Student M emailed their code to student X because they were close friends and M wanted to help X who was "struggling". X subsequently submitted M's code. M had acknowledged collaboration with X, but X had not acknowledged collaboration of any kind. X was awarded a mark of 0 for unauthorised collaboration. M's mark for the coding part of the practical was reduced by half on the grounds that although M's concerns and actions could be understood, the assistance given to X should not have extended to M emailing X with their code.
4. Student W was unable to submit a practical because the student was ill and had not yet started work on the practical. The student was awarded an extension after which the students submitted code which was found to be identical to that of student D (which had been submitted two weeks previously). The student W was awarded a mark of 0 for plagiarism. Student D was found to have emailed their solution to the practical to student W and was awarded a mark of 0 for unauthorised collaboration despite having submitted their work two weeks previously.
5. Student T submitted several practicals which were identical to those submitted by student W of the previous year's cohort. Student T was deemed to have failed COMP101. Student W's account was frozen pending an explanation of their actions.