Participating in the course requires you to accept the following honor code, which is an adaptation of the one used by Stanford University.

The Honor Code is an undertaking of the students, individually and collectively:

  • that they will not give or receive aid in examinations; that they will not give or receive unpermitted aid in class work, in the preparation of reports, or in any other work that is to be used by the instructor as the basis of grading;
  • that they will do their share and take an active part in seeing to it that others as well as themselves uphold the spirit and letter of the Honor Code.

In practice, this means that:

  • You must answer the quiz questions on your own, without help or collaboration with other students, 
  • You must write the written assignments (essays) yourself. You cannot copy text from the Internet, articles, or any other sources without proper referencing, as the referencing guidelines requires. You cannot use generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT) to write any part of your assignments. You cannot use generative AI as a source either, as they do not provide reliable information (they are known to "hallucinate", i.e., make things up) 
  • You must do the peer assessments yourself. You are not allowed to use generative AI for that purpose, either. 
  • You are encouraged to study the materials with fellow students. Discussing central points and readings, debating software engineering topics, and generally talking about the subject of the course with fellow students is strongly encouraged. 

Violations of the Honor Code

Examples of conduct that have been regarded as being in violation of the Honor Code include:

  • Unpermitted collaboration, e.g., submitting (nearly) identical essays
  • Plagiarism: the use, without giving reasonable and appropriate credit to or acknowledging the author or source, of another person's original work, whether such work is made up of code, formulas, ideas, language, research, strategies, writing or other form(s).
  • Use of generative AI to produce an essay, or part of it, or to do peer assessment
  • Revising and resubmitting a quiz or exam for regrading without the instructor’s knowledge and consent
  • Representing as one’s own work the work of another (e.g., writing an essay for your friend)
  • Giving or receiving aid on an academic assignment under circumstances in which a reasonable person should have known that such aid was not permitted
  • Discussing, sharing, or using quiz questions, essay assignments and their solutions 

Consequences of violating the honor code

If we find you in violation of the honor code, you (and any other student involved in the violation) will:

  • fail the exercise or course, depending on the severity of the case
  • face any and all penalties imposed by the University's official body handling cases of academic violations.
Last modified: Tuesday, 5 September 2023, 1:44 PM