Can a single syllabus sentence reduce academic dishonesty in a massive computer science course?
Harvard’s CS50 course faces the perennial challenge of maintaining academic integrity at scale. While traditional interventions like awareness campaigns and interventional conversations have struggled to curb plagiarism, one specific policy addition—the regret clause—has emerged as the most effective tool for managing student honesty and fostering a supportive learning environment.
The CS50 course at Harvard University, which teaches algorithmic thinking and programming, has long grappled with how to maintain academic honesty. Instructors have experimented with various preemptive measures, including campus-wide policy awareness, just-in-time prompts, and interventional conversations. Despite these efforts, few interventions have demonstrated significant or lasting effects on the frequency of plagiarized submissions. The most impactful change has been the introduction of a "regret clause" into the course syllabus.
This clause allows students who have committed a dishonest act to come forward voluntarily within 72 hours. By emailing the course heads, students can disclose their actions before the staff discovers them. In return, the course commits to avoiding escalation to the university’s honor council, which could otherwise result in severe outcomes like admonishment, probation, or required withdrawal. Instead, the course may impose local sanctions, such as zeroing the work in question, while connecting the student with academic and mental health support structures. Since 2014, 89 students have utilized this clause, representing between 1% and 3% of the student body annually.
The course philosophy centers on the concept of being reasonable. While collaboration is encouraged to facilitate mastery, there is a clear boundary between seeking help and submitting another person's work. Reasonable actions include discussing material, whiteboarding with pseudocode, or asking for help with bugs, provided the work remains one's own. Conversely, accessing solutions, paying for work, or failing to cite external code is considered unreasonable. This policy aims to guide students toward ethical behavior while providing a safety valve for those who make mistakes, ensuring that the focus remains on learning rather than purely punitive measures. By clearly defining these boundaries, the course attempts to balance the necessity of individual effort with the collaborative nature of modern software engineering.
