Math 115 (Policies)

Although it is to your advantage to do your work yourself, you may discuss the homework problems with each other. You should not, however, work out all the details together, and if you do work with others on homework that is turned in, you must cite the other students who were involved, and make a brief explanation of the roles each student played in the process.

When you do work together, you should each write up your own solutions independently. That does not mean that you should both simply copy out the same thing; rather, it means that you can work together to develop ideas, but should organize and present those ideas independently. You should not work out every detail together; that is, when you have finished working with someone, there should still be some coordination left for you. If your papers look substantially the same at the end, you have worked together too closely.

To make this effective, I have the following rule about working with others: you may not take any written material away from a collaboration. You can write down all you want when you are together, but you must throw it all away before you separate. This will encourage you to rethink the material when you write it up. If the collaboration was successful (and you learned something from it), you should be able to reproduce those ideas on your own. If not, then you have not really learned from the collaboration, and should not receive credit for work that you don't actually understand well enough to describe independently.

Failure to follow this policy is considered plagiarism, and will result in a visit to the Dean. The college takes plagiarism very seriously, and so do I. You should be sure to read the material on plagiarism and academic honesty that you received in your freshman orientation package.

Please also read the comments on collaboration from my advice pages.

Math 115 (Fall 2010) web pages Created: 26 Aug 2010 Last modified: Aug 27, 2010 1:21:36 PM Comments to: dpvc@union.edu

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