Cheating Policy in a Computer Science Department

Abstract

A history of cheating incidents in undergraduate Compute r Science courses led to considerable concern about the Compute r Science Department's ability to deal with cheating .A committe e was created in May, 1979, to propose ways to deal with thes e problems .The charter of the committee wa s e to draft a policy statement defining cheating and it s penalties • to recommend technological and policy measures fo r preventing and detecting cheating incident s This report describes the need for a cheating policy in th e Computer Science Department, proposes a policy on preventing , detecting, and punishing cheating, and suggests som e implementations of the policy .The policy was accepted by th e department in fall, 1979. . Backgroun dThe primary objective of any course should be to teac h information and skills to the students .However, the nature of th e University imposes an additional obligation to evaluate th e performance of each student and to report his mastery of th e material via a grade .A variety of pressures divert students ' attention from the knowledge to the grades ; occasionally thi s leads to attempts to obtain grades by cheating instead of learning .Although Carnegie-Mellon University has a policy on cheatin g and plagiarism (see Appendix I), it is often ignored, both b y students and by the faculty, This is unfortunate, for by condonin g cheating in our courses, w e• fail to achieve the educational objectives of th e course s• fail to establish a standard of professional integrit y• reduce our ability to make accurate assessments o f students' skills .

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