How strict is Academic Dishonesty Policy? (Nervous)

I’m a university student who is independently working through the Responsive Web Design certification. How strict does freeCodeCamp take the Academic Dishonesty Policy? Does it have to be 100% from scratch, or can I fork the example and use that code as a base to change things like color, text, small layout things, etc?

I’m a little nervous to submit in case I don’t make it different enough and get flagged for dishonesty.

It would be better if you didn’t look at the example code and tried to do your project from scratch

1 Like

If you’re taking working code and just making small cosmetic tweaks, you haven’t really proved your ability to accomplish the task.

Thank you both for clarifying!

I think worrying about doing the challenge by using the example code is not important.

If you walked into a job interview and was asked to do the exact same challenge from scratch would you be comfortable? Assuming you fork the challenge right now without any of the pressure probably means you wouldn’t be.

The value of the projects isn’t the actual project themselves, rather its in the experience you gain from doing them. I don’t think FCC will sue you or go after you if you just fork the challenge and make minor tweaks to it. HOWEVER you will end up without the experience of building it yourself, so in the end the only person being cheated is you.

Do the projects, learn the content. Don’t do the projects just to get the certificates, the actual experience of building stuff is where you get the most value.

I just finished redoing the projects from scratch and claimed the certification. Thank you so much for your truly excellent advice!

Good job! Congratulations.