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Instead of coming up with punitive solutions, I wonder what can be done to re-structure computer science education in ways that move the incentive structure away from one that encourages plagiarism? Bonus points if it improves the quality of the education, too. For example: What if we move toward a more seminar-style approach of having students discuss and critique each others' code on larger projects? This might not get rid of all copy/pasting, but it would create a huge incentive for students to at least understand how their code works, in order to avoid embarrassment in front of their classmates. And, should two kids copy/paste the same code, and that becomes apparent in the course of a peer review session, well, that's an event that everyone will remember. No need for the instructor to make themself the bad guy in the process, either. It also has the side benefit of giving students experience with code review, with reading and understanding others' code, and maybe helps them start to develop a sense for how to write clean, readable code several years before they start getting bludgeoned by senior devs at their first full-time job. As for smaller problem set type homework, why not give them group work? It doesn't necessarily need to be graded, aside from credit/no credit, if you're worried about giving A's to duffers. I had a few classes that did that back when I was in school, and I really liked it. I felt like I learned faster, both from working together with classmates and because the format allowed them to give us more challenging problem sets. |