Collaboration and Academic Integrity

In today’s engineering workplace, collaboration and teaming are more important than ever. Tools such as Slack, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and group texts greatly facilitate the ability of engineers and engineering students to collaborate. Our engineering accreditation (ABET) recognizes the importance of collaboration through one of their student outcomes: “an ability to function effectively on a team whose members together provide leadership, create a collaborative and inclusive environment, establish goals, plan tasks, and meet objectives.”

The Engineering Fundamentals curriculum includes a number of team-based assignments to provide opportunity for students to develop and demonstrate their ability to team and collaborate. Collaboration can also facilitate learning, and we encourage appropriate collaboration. In other cases, it becomes important to assess a student’s individual competence in a particular area; collaboration is inappropriate in these settings and is considered to be academic dishonesty. To provide clarity about the level of expected or allowed collaboration on any assignment, the EF faculty have adopted the following categories.

Group Assignments

Collaboration is required as part of the assignment. Often, only one assignment is submitted on behalf of the group, bearing the names of all of the students who contributed. Each student is expected to contribute to and is responsible for the submission. Often, we will require the individual contributions of each student to be documented in the assignment. Examples of group assignments include team projects and some lab activities.

Individual Assignments

On many individual assignments appropriate collaboration is allowed and encouraged. However, submission of an assignment signifies that you understand and have executed each step of the work independently from your collaborators. Copying is not allowed and will be considered academic dishonesty. Examples of these type of assignments are the Prep and Practice Questions and some lab activities.

Exams

No collaboration, providing assistance, or receiving assistance is allowed on exam, and any violation will be treated as academic dishonesty. Posting solutions or exam questions anywhere (including but not limited to social media, group chat, or other means of communication) to provide the questions or solutions for others in the course will be considered academic dishonesty.

Consultation of Existing Solutions

The faculty are aware that copies of student work from previous semesters and publisher-provided and third-party solutions are in existence and may be accessible to students. Students must be transparent in their use of these materials by explicitly acknowledging their use in the submission and understanding and executing each step of the submission independently. Posting any of the class materials online, such as to Chegg, is a copyright violation and will be considered academic dishonesty.

Additional Requirements

Additional information on academic integrity, and what is appropriate, are provided for specific assignments, such as portfolios and clickers.

Academic Dishonesty

Failure to abide by any the procedures of Engineering Fundamentals is academic dishonesty and will be considered in violation of the University Student Code of Conduct and subject to academic discipline as described in Hilltopics. This includes a class penalty up to and including failure of the course, and potential additional penalties imposed by the Tickle College of Engineering or the University.

Adapted from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering