20.109(F13):Statement on collaboration and integrity
Part of becoming a scientist/engineer is learning the ethical conventions of one's discipline. We ask you to rigorously present your results and to cite others' work appropriately not as arbitrary hoops to jump through but as part of your professional training. Integrity in depicting results improves reproducibility and reduces unnecessary frustration in the community who tries to build upon those results. Integrity in citing source not only gives credit to those who have earned it but also lets others independently assess the merits of both the original work and the conclusions you have drawn from it.
In 20.109, documentation of your experiments must be completed entirely by you unless otherwise stated. Thus, while we encourage you to discuss your results with your lab partner and other classmates, you may not share text or figures when completing homework assignments, the Module 1 methods, or the Module 2 report. (The Module 1 and Module 3 data summaries will be completed in pairs or larger groups.) Please do not plagiarize -- accidentally or otherwise -- the class wiki, or any other writing/images available online or elsewhere. Note that plagiarism is often unintentional, and take the responsibility now to learn the difference between appropriate paraphrasing and academic dishonesty. The following links may help you in this endeavor:
- MIT Libraries Overview on Citation, especially
- Consequences of academic dishonesty, from MIT Academic Integrity Handbook
Finally, in order for you to have the most meaningful learning experience possible, and to maintain a fair playing field for all students in the class, we ask that you do not look at completed assignments for similar modules run in previous years.
