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What is Plagiarism ?

Plagiarism is an act of claiming or implying another person’s work is your own. Plagiarism at Udacity can range from submitting a project you didn’t create to copying code into a program without citation. Any action in which you misleadingly claim an idea or piece of work as your own when it does not constitute plagiarism.


The below are some coding-specific examples of what constitutes plagiarism on the Udacity platform and what Udacity considers to be acceptable behavior, as well as some guidelines for submitting original work. While specific to coding, the below concepts can also apply to written content, images, UI designs, and other content created by another person. Please also note that these examples are not meant to be exhaustive, and Udacity reserves the right to take action, as it deems appropriate if it appears that your submission is, in any way, not your own work.

Examples of plagiarism:

  • Copying someone’s code exactly, in whole or part (verbatim).
  • Combining code copied verbatim from multiple sources.
  • Copying someone’s code, in whole or part, and making changes (e.g. changing variable or function names, comments, order of function definition).
  • Two or more students who work on a project together and end up with the identical code submission, or significant portions of their submissions show duplicated code.

Not Plagiarism:

  • Looking at someone else’s code to get a general idea of implementation, then putting it away and starting to write your own code from scratch.
  • Copying code or using code that has been provided for you and approved for use in your project by Udacity without attribution.
  • Two or more students who discuss a project together to get a general idea of implementation, then separate to each write their own code individually.
  • Using or adapting and then properly attributing (give date and URL) a small piece of helper code, either open source or written by someone else who has provided their consent to such use and/or adaptation. The helper code must not be directly relevant to the concepts being assessed in your assignment.