Student perceptions of the acceptability of various code-writing practices

This paper reports on research that used focus groups and a national online survey of computing students at Australian universities to investigate perceptions of acceptable academic practices in writing program code for assessment. The results indicate that computing students lack a comprehensive understanding of what constitutes acceptable academic practice with regard to writing program code. They are not clear on the need to reference code taken from other sources, or on how to do so. Where code from other sources is used, or inappropriate collaboration takes place between students, there appears to be a feeling that any academic misconduct is diminished or even nullified if the students subsequently work with the code to make it their own. These findings suggest a need for the development of standards that elucidate acceptable practices for computing, combined with ongoing education of computing students.