Grading Policy

Grading

15%      In-class test
35%      Final exam
50%      Assignments

  • One must obtain a mark of at least 35% on the final examination to pass the course. If a student's grade on the final exam is less than 35%, then their final course grade will be equal to the exam grade.
  • There will be four assignments in total, with weights 15, 15, 10 and 10 percent of the total grade, respectively. Assignments will be bi- or tri-weekly. The first three assignments will have a written portion and a programming portion. The last assignment will be programming only.

Late Assignments

Assignment due dates:

  • Written assignments are due in class by 6:10pm on the due date, which will always fall on a Wednesday (i.e., written assignments are due immediately before the tutorial).
  • Programming assignments are due by 11:59pm on the due date (usually this will be a Friday). Programming assignments should be submitted to the TA in electronic form. Exact submission instructions will be provided with the first assignment.

Late penalties for assignments:

  • For each day late, including weekends, 15 percent of the total possible points will be deducted (a day ends at the due time). For example, if a written assignment is due on Wednesday, no late penalty will be assessed if it is turned in by 6:10pm on Wednesday. If it is turned in after 6:10pm on Wednesday but before 6:10pm on Thursday there will be a 15 percent penalty, etc.
  • If you do not hand a written portion of the assignment in class by the due date/time, it is your responsibility to arrange turning in your written assignment to your TA. Note that TAs will not pick up your assignment during a weekend.
  • No work will be accepted if it is more than five days late.

Email & Newsgroup Traffic

  • Please do not send email directly to the TAs. They will not be replied.
  • Main forum for answering questions about class or about the assignments is the class bulletin board. Kyros will be handling all email responses to that group, possibly delegating them to one of the TAs.
  • Appropriate use of newgroup: clarifications on assignment, on lecture material, general concerns about the course, or other remarks that are appropriate for all students to see/participate in.
  • Do NOT broadcast pieces of your code or answers to written assignments to the bulletin board. Specific or general implementational questions whose answer would benefit all students in the class are appropriate. However: the bulletin board is NO replacement for the tutorial hour. That should be the main forum for asking/answering questions of this sort.
  • Questions of the form "I cannot find the problem with my code; here it is, can you help me" are unlikely to be replied, so don't count on it. If you have a question, come with them to my office hours, to the TA office hours, or to the tutorials.

Academic Honesty

    Academic honesty is a very serious matter. I am very saddened by the fact that isolated incidents of academic dishonesty occur almost every year in courses I've taught. These resulted in very serious consequences for the students that took part in them. Note that academic offences may be discovered and handled retroactively, even after the semester in which the course was taken for credit. The bottomline is this: you are not off the hook if you managed to cheat and not be discovered until the semester is over!!

  • Tests and exams in this course must be strictly individual work.
  • Each assignment will have a programming component and a written component. Unless noted otherwise on the assignment handout, assignments will be strictly individual work.
  • For programming components of an assignment: Collaboration on a programming component by individuals (whether or not they are taking the class) is encouraged at the level of ideas. Feel free to ask each other questions, brainstorm on algorithms, or work together at a blackboard. Be careful, however, about copying the actual code for programming assignments or merely adapting others' code. This sort of collaboration at the level of artifacts is permitted if explicitly acknowledged, but this is usually self-defeating. Specifically, you will get zero points for any portion of an artifact that you did not transform from concept into substance by yourself. If you neglect to label, clearly and prominently, any code that isn't your own or that you adapted from someone else's code (from another student in the class, from a previous year's assignment, or from the web), that's academic dishonesty for the purpose of this course and will be treated accordingly.
  • The principle behind the collaboration rule is simple: I want you to learn as much as possible. I don't care if you learn from me or from each other. The goal of artifacts (programming assignments) is simply to demonstrate what you have learned. So I'm happy to have you share ideas, but if you want your own points you have to internalize the ideas and them craft them into an artifact by yourself, without any direct assistance from anyone else, and without relying on any code taken from others (whether at this university or from the web).
  • There are some circumstances under which you may want to collaborate with someone else on the programming component of an assignment. You and a friend, for example, might create independent parts of an assignment, in which case you would each get the points pertaining to your portion, and you'd have the satisfaction of seeing the whole thing work. Or you might get totally stuck and copy one subroutine from someone else, in which case you could still get the points for the rest of the assignment (and the satisfaction of seeing the whole thing work). But if you want all the points, you have to write everything yourself.

For purposes of this class, academic dishonesty is defined as:

  • Any attempt to pass off work on a test that didn't come straight out of your own head.
  • Any collaboration on artifacts in which the collaborating parties don't clearly and prominently explain exactly who did what, at turn-in time.
  • Any activity that has the effect of significantly impairing the ability of another student to learn. Examples here might include destroying the work of others, interfering with their access to resources (eg. digital cameras), or deliberately providing them with misleading information.

[Note: this policy, with minor modifications, was developed by Michael Scott at the University of Rochester]


 
 

Site last modified on Wednesday, December 22, 2010
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