DOES THE COMPUTER PROGRAMMING STUDENT UNDERSTAND WHAT CONSTITUTES PLAGIARISM?

In this era of Internet access, faculty in higher education need to be proactive in preventing plagiarism in computer programming courses.But do students consider copying of computer code (either from another student or posted code on the Internet) as plagiarism?This paper investigates how the Computer Information Systems major views the copying of code, as well as other related cheating behaviors in the classroom.From the results of this research, it is clear that (although students report that they view copying of code as plagiarism), students do not view copying code as a serious offense.Course policies concerning copying of code from any source must be explicitly stated in the syllabus.In addition, faculty must provide guidance as to what is acceptable in terms of incorporating programming code from the Internet.