Plagiarism is a kind of fraud: passing off someone else's work or ideas as your own in order to get a higher mark. Plagiarism is treated very seriously. The assignments you hand in must be your own and must not contain anyone else's ideas. Refer to Appendix A in the U of T Code of Behavior on Academic Matters for a more detailed description of plagiarism.
You may discuss assignments with friends and classmates, but only up to a point: You may discuss and compare general approaches and also how to get around particular difficulties, but you should not leave such a discussion with any written material. You should not look at another student's solution to an assignment on paper or on the computer screen, even in draft form. The actual coding of your programs, analysis of results, and writing of reports must be done individually.
It is an academic offence to hand in "fake output" with your assignment, i.e. output that your program did not produce. This is usually considered a form of plagiarism, since the output is usually based on the output to someone else's program.
If you do talk with anyone about an assignment, please state this in your assignment and state the extent of your discussion.
Note that it is also a serious offense to help someone commit plagiarism. Do not lend your printouts, reports or diskettes, and do not let others copy or read them. To protect yourself against people copying your work without your knowledge, retain all of your old printouts and draft notes until the assignments have been graded and returned to you. If you suspect that someone has stolen a printout or diskette, contact your instructor immediately.
Although you must not solve your assignments with the help of others, there are still many ways in which students can help each other. For instance, you can go over difficult lecture or tutorial material, work through exercises, or help each other understand an assignment handout. This sort of course collaboration can be done in study groups.
When writing your programs, you will no doubt find it helpful to give/ask assistance with debugging to/from other students. Be very careful when doing so, as you will be treading a fine line between what is permissible, and what is considered plagiarism.
One important rule to bear in mind is that there is a difference between syntax/language errors and algorithmic errors. An example of the first type would be if you were missing a semicolon, or if you were not aware of a particular quirk of Maple which was causing problems. An example of the second is if you designed your code to sort the input in the wrong order. You are allowed to help each other debug the first type of error, but not the second. If you have any doubt about whether this help is permissable, you should err on the side of caution and ask your tutor/lecturer for help instead of getting help from a student.
Also, when looking at each others code for the purpose of debugging, do not read the entire code. Only show each other the absolute minimum amount of code necessary to spot the error (in many cases one line will suffice). Make sure that you do not show anyone enough of your code that he/she will see part of your algorithmic approach to solving the problem.
Also, when handing in your assignment, remember to list the people who helped you debug your program.