It has come to my attention that many people in the class (possibly over 100) have formed a giant "study group", with the intent that each person would solve only a few (3 or 4) problems, and the entire group would then share all of their accumulated (hundreds of) solutions.

While this is an interesting (and perhaps even entrepreneurial :) ) example of "crowd sourcing", it also violates the spirit of study group collaboration, and raises some serious ethical and moral issues.

I generally allow people to work in small groups in order to help them learn and make problem-solving more fun and social. However, I never said (nor intended) that a large fraction of the class would just copy each others' work, without meeting or truly brainstorming together, or even understanding what they are copying. This behavior is very counter-productive to good learning, and I never agreed to it (nor would I ever allow such a scheme).

This isn't a "study group" at all - it's simply mass copying of solutions. As I mentioned before, this class isn't a course in Google searching, nor is it an exercise in mass-copying.

Moreover, this behavior causes a lot of additional damage to everyone:

• It pressures people to join this large group of "mass copiers", since they feel that they will be at a disadvantage if they don't copy those solutions themselves, even if they prefer to solve the problems individually (or work in small truly collaborative groups which is allowed and encouraged).

• People in the large "mass copiers" group have even explicitly pressured other reluctant students to join the huge group and participate in the mass-copying. Such behavior comes uncomfortably close to coercion and/or bullying, and is not acceptable.

• This mass-copying behavior seriously stifles the problem-solving ability of those who engage in it. Copying answers isn't at all even close to solving problems yourself (as I have mentioned several times in lecture), and mass-copying solutions really short-changes you in the long run. Moreover, some of the solutions in the shared documents (e.g., Google docs) are simply incorrect, so people who just copy solutions often end up copying the wrong solutions! (We have already seen examples of this in the midterm, where people copied onto their midterm wrong solutions that they clearly didn't even understand.)

• Some people have even deliberately inserted wrong solutions into these shared documents, presumably to surreptitiously sabotage and/or punish those who blindly copy from these solutions. This is an example of how bad behavior encourages and escalates additional kinds of bad behavior.

• This mass-copying behavior also reduces class attendance since many of those who mass-copy misguidedly assume that they don't need to attend class anymore. There are many very important concepts and ideas discussed in class which these students then miss out on if they don't attend the lectures.

• This mass-copying scheme is having a demoralizing effect on many students in the class who view this behavior as unethical, as well as unfair to those who choose to not participate in it. So those who engage in mass-copying are hurting their peers in the class (ethically, psychologically, and even grade-wise by seriously skewing the natural overall scores distribution).

• This mass-copying behavior also has a demoralizing effect on me. I prefer to assume a high degree of maturity and good judgement among the students; I give you a lot of leeway, freedom and choice in how I conduct this class. But if you abuse my trust and good will, you will force me to stop treating you like responsible adults (and I much prefer to not have to do that). Do you really want to force me to become a "police-officer" (i.e., strict disciplinarian) in how I interact with you and with future students? For example, I can make the exams in-class closed-book instead of take-home open-book; I can make exam problems not come from the problem sets; I can conduct surprise in-class quizzes; I can ban study groups altogether; I could make class attendance mandatory; I can call certain people into my office; I can declare all collaborations to be an honor-code violation; and I can act more punitively in general. However, I would rather not be forced to do any of these things, and most students feel similarly.

I prefer to treat students as responsible adults, give you a lot of freedom, and try to encourage and reward you at every step. But this is a two-way street, in that the students too have a responsibility to not discourage enthusiastic professors by abusing their good will and taking advantage of their leniency and generosity. Some professors may cause their students to become jaded; but please keep in mind that this can also work the other way around. Many of you have had professors that seemed overly pedantic with their grading policy (e.g. having super strict deadlines, completely disallowing external resources, and generally acting adversarially towards their students). Please realize that these professors' adversarial behaviors may have been instigated (over the years) by the students' own adversarial behavior, e.g., by exploiting the professors' trust and good will, causing them to become more cynical over time, to the detriment of effective learning and empathic teaching. Please don't force your professors into the kind of strict-disciplinary behaviors that you would not like to be subjected to in the first place: it is definitely a co-evolution process between professors and students, so lets all try hard to evolve together in positive directions.

In particular, please stop engaging in mass-copying, and please treat your fellow students and me (and future professors) with the same respect and empathy that I afford all of you. Please stop looking for ways, however creative, to circumvent good learning and exploit my good will. Please don't take advantage of inadvertent loop-holes in the rules in order to make end-runs around ethical behavior. I don't "play gotcha" with you, so please don't "play gotcha" with me. Instead, please help me to help you become more effective problem solvers and better computer scientists!

In order to address these mass-copying issues more concretely, going forward (i.e., beginning today April 13, 2016) please abide by the following rules (which are still much more lenient than those used by most professors):

• All study groups sizes are limited to no more than eight people each, and each group member should contribute equally and fairly to their group (i.e., not just mass-copy solutions of the other group members).

• Collaborations should be conducted mostly through in-person meetings, not through Web-shared documents.

• Mass-copying and shared documents (e.g., Google docs where a large number of people each only contribute a few solutions yet each person still copies the entire large document) are absolutely prohibited. Please delete all such existing shared documents that are still accessible (both online and any local copies thereof), as well as copies of solutions obtained from them.

• Non-compliance with the above rules will henceforth constitute cheating, and therefore be an Honor Code violation.

I hope that we can put this issue behind us without having to revisit it. I would prefer to continue to trust that all of you can behave as mature learners, and I am willing to exercise leniency and ignore all previous transgressions up to today, as long as people behave well and abide by the above rules going forward.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Gabe

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Dr. Gabriel Robins
Professor of Computer Science

Department of Computer Science
School of Engineering and Applied Science
University of Virginia
85 Engineer's Way
P.O. Box 400740
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4740
(434) 982-2207
robins@cs.virginia.edu
www.cs.virginia.edu/robins
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