Plagiarism is not limited to copying the works of other people. Copying the work of a large language model or other generative AI system, such as ChatGPT, without proper attribution is also plagiarism.
Note that while documenting the sources of all materials you use to construct a program will avoid a charge of plagiarism, it may still be found that your submission is simply a collection of other's work and not a product of your own effort. In such circumstances you will receive credit for the portion of the assignment you have written yourself but not the portion that was taken from other sources.
You may discuss assignments with friends and classmates, but only up to a point. You may discuss and compare general approaches and also how to handle a specific difficulty. However, you should not leave such a discussion with any written or electronic material. At no time should you see (or become aware of by any other means) another student's solution, in part or in its entirety, on paper or on the computer screen in completed or draft form. The actual coding of programs, analysis of results, writing of reports and solution to written questions or problems must be done individually.
It is also a serious offense to help someone commit plagiarism. Do not lend your printouts or solutions to others in any manner (including, but not limited to, on paper, by allowing them to look over your shoulder as you work, by email etc). Ensure that the permissions on the directories where you store your work are set appropriately. Do not leave printouts on department printers for longer periods of time than necessary. Do not discard draft printouts in recycling or garbage containers within the department. If you suspect that someone has been able to acquire a copy of your work inform the instructor for the course immediately.
In written assignments you must clearly document the source of any material that you quote directly regardless of its source. This includes the provided course notes and the course textbook. Within this course it is not necessary to document the source of material that you use as the basis of ideas for a written assignment if the words written are your own and the source material is a commercial publication or the course notes.
In programming assignments you must clearly document any block of code 3 simple statements in length or longer that is taken from another source other than the course notes or the course textbook. It is not necessary to document heavily modified code from another source if the modifications significantly change the structure, purpose and functionality of the code in question. Modifications that meet this constraint are sufficiently extensive that there is no line-by-line correspondence between the source material and the modified version whatsoever.
If you are unsure if your use of outside material in a given context is acceptable ask the course instructor. In general, if you are unsure if it is necessary to include a reference to material you have used it is better to include the reference than not.
The preceding policy is an expansion and adaptation of James Stewart's CISC454 Policy on Plagiarism, Queen's University.