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Academic Honesty

Last updated 15 September 2026

Look things up, work with other people, and use AI to understand things. That is how the job is actually done. The final exam is the one place to work alone and without assistance, because the certificate makes a claim to somebody else. We run no AI detection and will not accuse you based on how your code reads.

Why This Page Exists

Almost nothing here is policed, because almost nothing here needs to be. Lessons, exercises and projects are yours to approach however you like, and copying an answer into a practice exercise harms nobody but the person doing it.

Two things are different: the final exam and the certificate. Those make a claim to other people, and a claim is only worth something if it is true. This page is about those.

Original Work

Work you submit for a graded assessment should be work you did and can explain. The test is simple and it is the one an interviewer will apply: could you talk through why this code is written the way it is, and change it if the requirements changed?

Looking things up is not cheating. Reading documentation, searching for an error message, reading a Stack Overflow answer and understanding an approach before writing your own version is how the job is done. Every working engineer does this daily.

Pasting in a solution you cannot explain is different, and the difference is whether you could do it again.

Reusing your own earlier work is fine and expected. This curriculum is built so that each project grows out of the last one.

Collaboration

Work with other people. Explaining a concept to someone else is one of the most effective ways to find out whether you actually understand it, and pair programming is a normal professional practice rather than a workaround.

For exercises and projects, collaborate freely: discuss approaches, read each other's code, debug together, and review each other's work.

For the final exam, work alone. That is the only assessment on the platform where this is asked, and it is asked because the certificate depends on it.

Do not share exam questions or answers with anyone, during or after. Doing that devalues every certificate including your own.

Teachers: the classroom view shows you progress and mastery so you can help, not so you can catch people. It works better that way.

AI Assistance

AI tools exist, they are useful, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest in a curriculum that claims to prepare people for real work. The question is not whether you use them, it is whether you are learning.

Useful. Asking an assistant to explain a concept a different way, to explain what an error means, to review code you wrote and tell you what is weak about it, or to generate practice problems. All of this builds understanding.

Not useful. Pasting an exercise in, pasting the answer back out, and moving on. You will finish faster and know nothing, and the gap shows up precisely when it costs most, which is in an interview or on your first team.

For the final exam, do not use AI assistance. Same reason as working alone: the certificate says you can do this.

A practical rule for everything else: use the tool to understand, then close it and write the code yourself. If you cannot write it afterwards, you have not finished learning it yet, which is information worth having.

This platform runs no AI detection and will not accuse you based on how your code reads. Detection tools are unreliable and they are wrong most often about people who write unusually, including people writing in a second language. We are not going to build a system that treats that as guilt.

Attribution

When you use someone else's code in a project, say so. A comment naming the source and its licence is enough.

This matters more than it looks. Attribution is a professional habit, licences are legally binding, and a portfolio project containing unattributed code from a restrictive licence is a genuine problem rather than an etiquette failure.

You do not need to attribute Sankofa Code in your own projects. The work is yours.

Where a project brief here is built around a public dataset, credit the dataset the way its publisher asks. The lessons show you how.

Violations

If we have good reason to believe an exam result or certificate was not earned, we will say so, explain why, and give you a chance to respond before doing anything. A person handles this.

  • A certificate obtained dishonestly can be revoked, and its verification record marked accordingly.
  • An exam result can be voided, and you may be asked to retake it under the same conditions as everyone else.
  • Sharing exam content publicly can cost you access to assessments.
  • Repeated or deliberate abuse can close the account, under the Terms.

Your lessons, projects and progress are not touched by any of this. Your learning is yours regardless, and nothing here reaches into work you did for yourself.

If you think we got it wrong, reply and say so. See Suspension in the Terms for how these decisions are made.

Questions about this policy go to hello@sankofacode.org. Every message gets a personal reply.

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