Collaboration and Sharing
In line with MIT’s policy on Academic Integrity, and with the collaboration policies of 6.009, here are our expectations regarding collaboration and sharing of work.
Collaboration
We encourage you to help each other with work in this class, but there are limits to what you can do, to ensure that everybody has a good individual learning experience. This section describes those limits.
Individual Work
You are encouraged to discuss approaches with other students but your code and your write-up must be your own.
You may not use materials produced as course work by other students, whether in this term or previous terms, nor may you provide work for other students to use.
It’s good to help other students. But as a general rule, during the time that you are helping another student, your own solution should not be visible, either to you or to them. Make a habit of closing your laptop while you’re helping.
It’s fine to use material from external sources like StackOverflow, but only with proper attribution, and only if the assignment allows it. In particular, if the assignment says “implement X,” then you must create your own X, not reuse one from an external source.
You must cite your sources: list the names of any students who helped you in any way, and give proper attribution for any online resources that you referenced.
It’s also fine to use any code provided by this semester’s staff (in class, readings, labs, or problem sets), without need for attribution. Staff-provided code may not be publicly shared without permission, however, as discussed later in this document.
Examples
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Alyssa and Ben sit next to each other with their laptops while working on a problem set. They talk in general terms about different approaches to doing the problem set. They draw diagrams on the whiteboard. When Alyssa discovers a useful Javascript API, she mentions it to Ben. When Ben finds a StackOverflow answer that helps, he sends the URL to Alyssa. OK.
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As they type lines of code, they speak the code aloud to the other person, to make sure both people have the right code. INAPPROPRIATE.
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In a tricky part of the problem set, Alyssa and Ben look at each other’s screens and compare them so that they can get their code right. INAPPROPRIATE.
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Jerry already finished the problem set, but his friend Ben is now struggling with a nasty bug. Jerry sits next to Ben, looks at his code, and helps him debug. OK.
- Jerry opens his own laptop, finds his solution to the problem set, and refers to it while he’s helping Ben correct his code. INAPPROPRIATE.
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Louis had three problem sets and two quizzes this week, was away from campus for several days for a track meet, and then got sick. He’s already taken two slack days on the deadline and has made almost no progress on the problem set. Maria feels sorry for Louis and wants to help, so she sits down with Louis and talks with him about how to do the problem set while Louis is working on it. Maria already handed in her own solution, but she doesn’t open her own laptop to look at it while she’s helping Louis. OK.
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Maria opens her laptop and reads her own code while she’s helping Louis. INAPPROPRIATE.
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Maria has by now spent a couple hours with Louis, and Louis still needs help, but Maria really needs to get back to her own work. She puts her code in a Dropbox and shares it with Louis, after Louis promises only to look at it when he really has to. INAPPROPRIATE.
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Note that in the examples marked inappropriate above, both people are held responsible for the violation in academic honesty. Copying work, or knowingly making work available for copying, in contravention of this policy is a serious offense that may incur reduced grades, failing the course, and disciplinary action. Copying, or helping somebody copy, may result in an F on your transcript that you will not be able to drop.
Public sharing of work
People often want to share their code publicly, e.g., on Github, in order to show off a portfolio of code they’ve written to potential employers.
The policy for public sharing of course code is described below.
Problem sets
Copyright for the starter problem set code is held by the course staff, and does not allow redistribution of derived works without prior permission. Your solutions are a derived work, so you may not distribute your problem set solutions publicly. This means you cannot post the source code on Github, in a public Dropbox folder, or on a public server accessible to others.
If you want to post your problem set UI in a place where others can play with it as users, then you have permission to do that as long as you minify the code before you post it (using e.g. JSCompress.com or javascript-minifier.com).
Keep in mind that when work on an individual problem set is copied, both the provider and the consumer of copied materials are violating academic honesty standards, as described above.