University of Nottingham
Policy on Plagiarism and Late Handing in of Work
This means copying work and pretending that it is yours. Plagiarism is not allowed. Any student who plagiarises the work of others will be reported to the Academic Offences Committee via the Registrar and Head of Department.
The following actions are considered to be plagiarism:
You can stop other people copying your work on the computer by checking that your file permissions are set properly and by not leaving printouts lying around on or near the printers.
Working in groups is acceptable, and encouraged for some subjects, provided that the group work does not lead directly to a finished program or essay. It is important to understand that a program or essay which is submitted as coursework must contain a sufficient amount of your own effort to make it your work rather than the group's work. More specifically, you may want to discuss possibilities for algorithms and data structures that might be appropriate to some particular piece of coursework, and this is perfectly acceptable. But when you go to the machine you must code up your *own* solution to the problem. You must *not* use a friend's program as a template or a short cut towards your own solution. In other words, any work you hand in should clearly be your own and should not be a joint effort. Essays can include paragraphs copied from a text book providing you acknowledge the source and list all references in the essay; this shows that you are reading round the subject as you should.
We also need to tell you that we have an AUTOMATIC PLAGIARISM DETECTOR which is capable of comparing all students programs across an entire course. The detector is very sophisticated and is capable of spotting programs that are identical, nearly identical or just similar. We always check your work with this tool and have spotted may cases of plagiarism in previous years.
Our policy for late programming work is different to the standard university policy. The standard policy reduces marks by 5% for each day a piece of work is late. Our policy is much stricter. If you hand in your programming solutions late then you will get no marks for them. This is because (to help all those students who handed work in on time) we make the model solution to each exercise available as soon as that exercise closes, which would allow you to copy it. Please, do not hand in work late. If you think that you are going to be late for a good reason, then tell the course lecturer and your tutor BEFORE the deadline.
Evidence from the plagiarism system shows that much of the work involved in plagiarism was submitted just before the handing-in deadline. If you leave submission until the last possible moment, and in your panic ask a friend how to do it, beware! The system points this out to the teacher.
In summary, don't copy and don't hand in late. We are sorry to be so blunt, but it is important that everybody understands the rules we are working under. This is particularly true on coursework assessed modules. Remember, consult a member of staff if in doubt.
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