Introductory computing students' conceptions of illegal student-student collaboration

Abstract

Academic integrity and cheating are issues of specific importance in computing courses due to the restricted nature of much of our assigned work. Additionally, use of valued pedagogical and professional practices such as pair programming can muddy the waters when it comes to students' understandings and experiences with collaboration. In this study we report on 112 students at the beginning of a second programming course being asked to describe a scenario of student-to-student collaboration that crosses the line in terms of what should be allowed in the course. We find that students describe inappropriate acts involving sharing of code and sharing of information, with the former being more prevalent. Additionally, about half of the scenarios include mitigating circumstances that should not affect the propriety of those acts. Finally, when presented with other students' (often vague) scenarios, students have little consensus on whether those reflect appropriate or inappropriate collaborations.