There can be a fine line between working together appropriately and inappropriately. Working with others, asking questions, and explaining concepts are important steps in the learning process and are strongly encouraged. Copying someone else's work or allowing your work to be copied in any setting (hwk, lab, exams, etc.) does not promote learning, is unfair to honest students, is not allowed in this course, and will be immediately reported to Student Judicial Affairs as is now required by university policy. Students that observe inappropriate activity should report what they see (anonymously if desired) to a TA or the instructor.

Make sure you read the UCD Code of Academic Conduct.

The remainder of this document attempts to make the separation between encouraged collaboration and unpermitted collaboration as clear as possible. If in doubt, play it safe and ask the instructor first!

Encouraged collaboration

These things are encouraged and allowed:

• Discussing material covered in lecture, or the readings.

• Discussing the requirements of an assignment.

• Discussing features of the languages, tools, and libraries used in the class.

• Discussing general concepts of designing, coding, or debugging. Encouraged example statements/exchanges include:
  • "It worked well to test each module independently before assembling the whole system"
  • "When something doesn't work right, first look at all input signals in the waveform viewer."
  • "Why doesn't matlab let me use an index of 0 in an array?"
  • "What should I do when I get a '(UID-4)' error?" "Check if your module is located in a file of the same name."
  • "What should I do when I get a DRC error but I can't find the location of the problem?"   Discussion: "Try running DRC on halves, quarters, eighths, etc. until you find the location."

• Any discussion between you and the instructor. You are welcome to discuss any and all ideas, design, code, debugging, etc. with the instructor.

Permitted collaboration, but only if documented

When you engage in more detailed discussions of assignments, you must include the name of the person(s) who assisted you and properly credit their contribution to your work. This is akin to acknowledging a reference in a research paper. These cases include:

• Discussing more detailed concepts of designing, implementations, or debugging.

• Some example exchanges requiring citation are:

  • "Laying out my cells is requiring so much work, the cells are very crowded! Is 10 lambda too short?"   Assistance: "Yes, that is much too short, they should be taller."

  • "My wires are so tangled, I can't keep them straight."   Assistance: "Did you try routing the odd levels horizontally and the even levels vertically?"

Unpermitted collaboration

The overall guideline for unpermitted collaboration is that you must submit work which represents your original, independent effort. It should not be based on, influenced by, or copied from anyone else's work—including people not enrolled in the course.

• Copying. This is the most blatant violation. You may not use anyone else's work, or allow anyone else to use your work.

• Using work from past quarters. Using someone's work or solutions from a previous quarter is an obvious violation.

• Looking at someone else's work. You should never read anyone else's work before yours is submitted, whether it is on the screen or written out by hand.

• Debugging with another person. Working at the same computer as someone and trying to fix a bug is not allowed. It makes it too easy to look over someone else's work, and allows (sometimes unintended) copying. Describing to someone your general problem and asking for advice on how to fix it is okay, but you should do the actual debugging yourself.

• Copying someone else's high-level design. Discussing high-level design with someone else and sharing ideas and critiquing each other's design is okay if attributed. However, just taking someone else's design is not allowed. It is akin to taking someone else's outline for a research paper and basing your paper on that.

• Discussing assignments in such detail that you duplicate a portion of someone else's work in your own design.

• You may not permit your work to be used for any unpermitted collaboration.

• Any interactions with cheating websites such as chegg or coursehero are violations of course policy.

Read SJA's Suggestions for Avoiding Academic Misconduct.

Read Student Affairs' Stress, Academic Honesty and the Pandemic.

This policy is based on the collaboration policy used in CS 106X at Stanford University.

2005/03/07  Minor edits
2017/02/04  Minor edits
2017/05/31  Minor edits
2018/06/28  Minor edits
2018/09/26  Significant restructuring to sync versions
2019/01/07  Minor edits
2020/11/22  Added articles by SJA and Student Affairs