Collaborative work is vital to the spirit and intellectual life of the Institute. In some classes, you will be encouraged to collaborate with other students on problem sets, projects, or papers. The amount of collaboration will vary from class to class. Find out from your instructor how much collaboration is permitted. The details may be clearly stated in the course handouts. If they are not, ask your instructor to be specific about how much collaboration he or she allows. Make sure you know where to draw the line between collaboration and what should be considered cheating.

The following example shows the collaboration guidelines for one class:

Collaboration Policy for 3.014, Materials Laboratory - Fall Term 2004

In preparing your reports, you are encouraged to discuss your results with your lab-mates. Data and figures may be shared between students in your lab group for the purpose of preparing your report, provided proper acknowledgement is made in your reports.

All writing in 3.014 must be original. Students should not copy any portion of their laboratory reports from reference materials or the reports of other students. Students should not use reports from previous years or their lab mates' reports in preparing their own reports. 3.014 has a zero tolerance policy on plagiarism. Any student caught plagiarizing will receive a grade of zero on the assignment and be taken to the Committee on Discipline (COD) for disciplinary action.

You are responsible for knowing what acts constitute plagiarism. For a tutorial on plagiarism please refer to the URL: http://libraries.mit.edu/tutorials/general/plagiarism.html. If you have any doubt about how/when to properly cite or use a source, contact Professors Mayes or Stellacci to obtain clarification.

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Used with the permission of Professor Anne Mayes, Dept. of Materials Science, MIT.