Programming Classes: Getting Help Dr. Ralph D. Westfall March, 2011

Learning Computer Programming the #1 goal of this class is for students to learn programming if you get help that makes you a better programmer, that is good if someone else writes code for you, that is NOT good you will not learn as much as you need to learn to get a "C" in this class

Acceptable Help tutoring someone explaining how various aspects of the programming language work demonstrating or helping you write code samples in general (not for a specific part of an assignment) e.g., for loop, if...else if...

Acceptable Help - 2 someone helping you find bugs after you have already tried finding rather than writing code for you general suggestions about what you need to do next if you are "stuck" there may be other things which could be acceptable check with me

Acceptable Help - 3 getting help from instructor course "self-help" discussion list can provide short snippets of code that show what to do in general, rather than code that can be plugged directly into the problem

Unacceptable Help other person writing (or dictating) code for you person "solving" the problem for you explanation of all (or most) of the steps copying someone's code letting someone copy your code more serious problem than copying

“Project 2 Plagiarism” “I was sad to see that I received an with this subject line.” “As [name] will attest, I gave him parts of my code to read and learn how I used the JOptionpane code in particular. [But other code copied too.] I asked him several times to not use my code in his project or under his name.”

Project 2 Plagiarism - 2 [deleted lines explaining why this person was really the original author, rather than being the person who was using another person’s work] “If possible, I can meet Monday anytime from 6pm-8pm to discuss the situation.” “Thanks and sorry this had to happen.”

Bottom Line % of course grade is from tests each test will have a number of programming problems if you can't solve simple programming problems on the tests, your grade will be lower than a 'C' even if you do very well on the projects

Group or Discussion Exercise identify problems (as many as you can) that cheating could create for the following "stakeholders" other students at Cal Poly employers who hire Cal Poly graduates Cal Poly as a university the student who cheats others (not mentioned above)?

Group or Discussion Exercise what could be done at Cal Poly to discourage problems associated with cheating: by faculty/administration? by students?

Group or Discussion Exercise Find the paraphrased text examples at plagiarism.txt plagiarism.txt identify the differences don't be the last group to identify the first (easiest) source