How to Set Up an Academic Integrity Quiz for your CS Course

Programming courses present unique academic integrity challenges. Students often aren’t sure where the line is between legitimate collaboration and academic dishonesty—especially when working with AI tools, online resources, and study groups.

Providing an academic integrity quiz a few weeks into the term can help clarify the landscape for students.

Quiz Scenarios

Code Collaboration & Attribution

Study Group Boundaries
Your study group worked through a problem together on a whiteboard. Is it okay to take a photo of the solution and use it directly in your submission?

Paraphrasing Code
You found a solution online that solves your assignment. You changed the variable names and added comments. Is this acceptable?

Debugging Help
A classmate showed you their working code to help you debug yours. You identified the issue by comparing approaches. Do you need to cite them?

Tutoring Session Code
During a tutoring session, the tutor wrote code to demonstrate a concept. Can you use that exact code in your assignment?

Group Project Individual Contributions
In a team project, one member wrote most of the code. How should individual contributions be documented?

Online Resources & AI Tools

Stack Overflow Solutions
You found the exact function you need on Stack Overflow. What’s the appropriate way to use it?

GitHub Example Code
You’re using a GitHub repository as a learning reference. Where’s the line between learning from it and copying it?

AI Code Generation
You used ChatGPT to generate a function, then modified it. What attribution is required?

YouTube Tutorial Following
You followed a YouTube coding tutorial step-by-step. Is your resulting code your own work?

Documentation Examples
The official Python documentation includes example code that solves part of your assignment. Can you use it?

Submission & Reuse

Resubmitting Your Own Work
You wrote similar code for a previous assignment. Can you reuse it for this one?

Late Submission Pressure
You’re running late and a friend offers to send you their completed code “just to look at.” What should you do?

Code From Previous Semester
You found solutions from when your roommate took the course last year. Is it okay to reference them?

Sharing Your Code
A struggling classmate asks if they can look at your completed code. How should you respond?

Template Code Modifications
The professor provided starter code. How much modification constitutes “your work”?

Testing & Development

Using Online Compilers
You used an online IDE that auto-suggests code completions. Do these suggestions count as outside help?

Library vs. Custom Implementation
The assignment asks you to implement a sorting algorithm, but Python has built-in sorting. What’s appropriate?

Test Case Sharing
Students are sharing test cases to help each other. Is this collaboration or cheating?

Code Review Requests
You asked a friend to review your code for bugs before submission. Is this acceptable collaboration?

Emergency Situation
You’re sick the night before the deadline. Is it okay to submit code you mostly understand but got help completing?

Connecting to Your School’s Academic Integrity Policy

How These Quizzes Support Policy Implementation

Policy Alignment:

  • Definitions of Plagiarism: Quizzes help students understand that plagiarism in programming isn’t just copy-paste but includes insufficiently modified code, unattributed collaboration, and contract cheating
  • Acceptable Collaboration Guidelines: Students learn where instructors draw the line between collaborative learning and academic dishonesty for specific course types
  • Citation Requirements: Programming courses often require citing code sources (Stack Overflow, GitHub, AI tools, peer help) differently than written essays
  • Self-Plagiarism Rules: Many students don’t realize resubmitting their own previous work may violate policies
  • Consequences Framework: Quizzes can reference specific institutional penalties (warnings, course failure, suspension) to emphasize seriousness

Implementation Strategies

Required Completion: Make quiz completion mandatory. Consider waiting until week 3, when students are more likely to begin feeling assignment pressure.

Policy Excerpts: Include direct quotes from your institution’s academic integrity policy in quiz feedback explanations.

Course-Specific Addendum: Link quizzes to a course-specific academic integrity statement that clarifies how institutional policies apply to programming assignments.

Syllabus Integration: Reference quiz scenarios in the course syllabus when explaining collaboration policies and citation requirements.

Honor Code Connection: For schools with honor codes, frame quiz scenarios as applications of honor code principles to technical coursework.

Reporting Procedures: Include information about how violations are reported, investigated, and adjudicated at your institution.

Resources Section: Direct students to campus academic integrity offices, writing centers, and tutoring services as legitimate help resources.

or, go back to the blog.