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Updates:

No Cheating

Cheating is not allowed in any of my classes. This means, among other things, that work you turn in must either be entirely your own, or cited in an informative way, according to the rules of the class and the university, using both common sense, and correct practice according to the student handbook.

Cheating is wrong. Here is why.

The main point an educated, moral, person should consider is that there really is some other real person -- with children they support, perhaps with an ill parent living at home, who really needs to get a scholarship, and a job -- who has decided that as much as they would like to get an A, or a B, they will not cheat to get it. When you cheat, you are hurting this person. If you are not a sociopath, you MUST consider how this person will feel when you cheat to get in front of them.

Your friends might cheat; perhaps the culture you grew up with supports cheating as a normal activity as long as one does not get caught. If so, it is time for you to move past those friends, and to adopt here, at DePaul, an updated culture. Cheating is always wrong at DePaul. Cheating always hurts those doing the hardest work for the good of all. Cheating is not moral.

If you know that someone is cheating, I hope you will do the right thing and tell them to stop it. Ask them to consider the harm they really are doing to others who are not willing to cheat. As much as I hate to bother with it, I always watch for cheating, because it hurts the student community. If I find that you have cheated, we will take it up with the dean. You run the risk of being expelled from the University.

In general anything "passed around" among a small group of students secretly, but not known to the instructor, and not available to the community of students, is probably unethical. That is, if someone obtained a secretly "leaked" copy of an old exam and four students secretly used it to study without letting others know about it, this would be unethical. By contrast, if four students worked in a study group and compared notes each week during the quarter, this would not be unethical. What is the test case? How would our hard-working, honest, student feel? They might wish that they were able to participate in the study group, but would not feel it unfair that they could not; if they knew about the stolen or leaked exam, however, they would be very discouraged.

If you borrow more than a snippet of code, then put in a comment about where it came from.

If you get some ideas from the Web, make this clear. NEVER copy in text without CLEARLY citing where it came from. Do your best to at least cite the original author by name, and always give the URL.

If you claim you did something in a class online submission checklist, but you did not actually do it, this is explicitly cheating. Be careful.

When in doubt about whether something is an instance of cheating, then you must ask me.

Cultures

As mentioned above, some cultures have an unwritten rule that it is o.k. to cheat as long as you don't get caught. It is considered a sign of craftiness. This is NOT the culture at DePaul. In every poll I've ever taken, students are close to universal in their hatred for cheating, and the distain with which they hold students who cheat. In this culture, if you cheat, people will hate you. They don't want you in their class. They don't want you in their university. They don't want you at work. They don't want you in their lives.

Just Once

If you are a person who usually cheats, then, in this class, try instead being an honest, moral, ethical, person. You will find that you like it.