Academic Conduct

The rules for conduct in UC Davis classes boil down to two principles: The University explains these rules in detail on the Web page for Student Judicial Affairs.

Be polite

As adults meeting in a professional context, we should all behave professionally: this means being polite and respectful to everyone we deal with.

As the instructor and TAs, it is our responsibility to teach as well as we can and to be available, polite and respectful to students.

You are responsible for treating us and your fellow students politely and with respect. In lectures, sections, and labs you should not bother the people around you.

In particular, you may not eat in class. I know the lecture is during lunch time, but the person next to you might be hungry as well, and if you are eating they will not be able to concentrate on anything else.

You may not take phone calls in lecture or section, and please try to remember to turn off your ringer. While it is OK to whisper to the person next to you, or pass notes, or text or email a friend across the room (so long as you are quiet about it), it is not OK to have a conversation in a normal tone of voice.

Take the time to be polite and respectful when emailing the professor and TAs. For example, this email to a TA is not appropriate: 

> r u handing back midterms th?

The question is fine, but the style is all wrong. It is not an appropriate professional communication, because it is not polite and respectful. This message is much better: 

> Hi Gary, 
> 
> This is Shareen, from your Thursday discussion section. 
> I was wondering if you are going to be handing back the midterms 
> this week?
>
> Thanks, Shareen

Notice the formal greeting, how the writer identifies herself, the use of complete sentences, punctuation and capital letters, the polite phrasing of the question, and the gracious closing. The professor should be addressed, in email or in real life, as "Professor Amenta", "Ms. Amenta", "Dr. Amenta", or just "Professor".

Don't cheat

As the instructor and teaching assistants, it is our responsiblity to make tests and assignments that are fair, to grade fairly, to look for cheating, and to refer students who cheat to Student Judicial Affairs for possible sanctions. The English department usually makes the largest number of referals to SJA last, but Computer Science is in the top 10, and a number of those are from ECS 10. Students from ECS 10 are most often referred to SJA for copying each other's programs or copying on tests.

As students, it is your responsibility to avoid cheating and to discourage other students from cheating.

It is pretty clear what it means to cheat on a test, in this class just like any other. To discourage cheating, our tests will be open book and open notes.

It is sometimes less clear to a student when s/he is cheating on a programming assignment. We want you to help each other, and we want you to look at examples of similar programs. So how do you know when helping and looking crosses the line into cheating? Here's our basic rule:

You should write each line of your program yourself, and you should know what it does and why it is there.

To check yourself, you should type each line of your program yourself; never copy or cut-and-paste from another file. While you're typing, ask yourself, do I know what this line does? Why am I including it in this program?

Often the easiest way to write a program, even in industry, is to take an already-existing program that does something similar, and change it around. This is fine in "real-life", but in this class, it is better not to cut-and-paste whole programs or even single lines, since as a beginner you need to concentrate on every line. You should, however, look very carefully at the example programs from lecture or the textbook, and figure out how your programs should be similar or different.

Writing programs can be very, very frustrating. Sometimes you don't know how to start. Sometimes your program seems perfect, but it doesn't do what you think it should be doing. We want you to talk to the other students, to friends who are programmers, to the TAs, to anyone who can help! We want you to show them your programs and ask them what's wrong. But make sure when the conversation is over that you understand every line of your (hopefully improved...) program. If your friend is telling you exactly what to type, you are cheating.

If you are looking at another student's program to help them, that is not cheating. If you are showing another student your program to help him or her, that is cheating. If you are looking at another student's program while typing in yours, or if you cut-and-paste from another student's program, that is obviously cheating and you are very likely to be caught.

You will quickly see that there are always many, many ways to write a program for a particular programming assignment, just like there are many ways to write an essay for a particular English assignment. And it is almost as easy to recognize two almost identical programs as it is to recognize two almost identical essays. For some of the assignments in this course, we will use software to detect almost identical programs. If you find yourself changing around someone else's program to try to fool the detection software, you are cheating.