CSCI-GA.3250-001: Policies and Grading

Grading

• 30%: class participation (see below for what we expect)
• 40%: exam
• 15%: labs
• 15%: final project

Class participation

• We expect students to do the assigned reading before class.
• We expect each student to participate in each class in a quality way. If you volunteer to speak during a given discussion, great. If you don't volunteer, we will call on you.
• By "quality", we mean that you are contributing to the discussion, not detracting from it. Ways of contributing to the discussion include highlighting genuine confusions, shedding light on a paper, answering the discussion leader's questions, giving new points of view (that you substantiate with evidence), etc. Please do not try to game the class discussion with irrelevant comments or bogus questions as a way of enhancing your participation. First of all, such behavior is pretty obvious. Second, we are evaluating you based on quality, not quantity.
• You will be evaluated based in part on attendance.
• On the other hand, if you have not prepared, please don't show up. If you do show up unprepared, and that fact comes out (as it often does -- remember, we are calling on students), you will not only not be counted as present but you will also do further harm to your grade. Why the harsh policy? Having disengaged people in the room detracts from the discussion, which is unfair to the rest of the class.
• There may be pop quizzes, just to make sure that students are keeping up with the reading.

Exam

The final exam will cover all class material: readings, discussion, and labs. It will most likely be open book.

Turn-in policy, slacking, lateness, etc.

The course permits two kinds of limited slacking:

1. You can skip at most ONE class discussion during the semester, with no ill effects on the participation grade. You do not have to email us to let us know when you're exercising this option. Missed classes beyond one (or showing up without having done the assigned reading) will adversely affect your grade.
2. Labs will be accepted until the last day of class. Each student gets a total of 96 late hours for the lab assignments. This is four days, total, but you can spend them however you want (a few hours here, a few there, etc.). We round up, so if a lab is late by, say, 10 minutes, that counts as having spent a late hour. Beyond your late hours, each additional day late will incur a full letter grade penalty (fractions of a day count as entire days). However, there is a floor: labs that are 100% correct cannot fall below a grade of C-, which is the minimum passing letter grade (labs that are X% correct and more than 96 hours late would get X% of the points that a C- represents, etc). The intent of the floor is that if you do all of the work, you can pass, even if you are very late.

Exemptions of the lateness rules will be allowed in three cases:

1. Illness, which requires a doctor's note. The instructor will not look at such notes; instead, bring the note to the appropriate department or university officer (this will be announced), who will communicate with the instructor.
2. Death in the immediate family.
3. Accommodation for students with disabilities as prescribed by the university.

No extensions will be given for any other reason (including job interviews, business trips, work on research publications, etc.).

You are required to turn in every lab assignment, late or otherwise. If, by the end of the semester, you have not turned in all of the assignments, then 30% of your grade will be an F (borrowing weights from the other categories if necessary).

Collaboration, source material, and academic integrity

• The work that you turn in must be yours. Code that you turn in must be code that you wrote and debugged. Do not discuss code, in any form, with your classmates or others outside the class (for example, discussing code on a whiteboard is not okay). As a corollary, it's not okay to show others your code, look at anyone else's, or help others debug. It is okay to discuss code with the instructor and TAs.
• You must acknowledge your influences. This means, first, writing down the names of people with whom you discussed the assignment, and what you discussed with them. If student A gets an idea from student B, both students are obligated to write down that fact and also what the idea was. Second, you are obligated to acknowledge other contributions (for example, ideas from Web sites or other sources). The only exception is that material presented in class or the textbook does not require citation.
• You must not look at, or use, solutions from prior years or the Web, or seek assistance from the Internet. For example, do not post questions from our lab assignments on the Web. Ask the course staff, via email or Piazza, if you have questions about this.
• You must take reasonable steps to protect your work. You must not publish your solutions (for example on github or stackoverflow), in this semester or any future semester. You are obligated to protect your files and printouts from access.
• If there are inexplicable discrepancies between exam and lab performance, we will overweight the exam, and possibly interview you. Our exams will cover the labs. If, in light of your exam performance, your lab performance is implausible, we may discount your lab grade (if this happens, we will notify you). We may also conduct an interview or oral exam.

More about collaboration

You can discuss the labs in general terms with your classmates. What does "general terms" mean? First of all, per the policy above, you cannot look at the written work of anyone else (besides your partner for a given assignment). Second, after discussing a problem with another student (or the course staff!), go do something else (read a book, watch a movie) for half an hour before going back to work on the assignment. If you can't remember what the person said after a half hour, you didn't really understand it.

More about source material

You are welcome to use existing public libraries in your programming assignments (such as public classes for queues, trees, etc.) You may also look at code for public domain software such as Linux. Consistent with the policies and normal academic practice, you are obligated to cite any source that gave you code or an idea.

Per the policy above, you may not look at any course material relating to any project or lab similar to this course's assignments. You may not look at work done by students in past years' courses. You may not look at similar course projects at other universities. If you are unsure about whether a particular source of external information is permitted, contact the instructor before looking at it.

More about academic integrity

The above guidelines are necessarily generalizations and cannot account for all circumstances. Intellectual dishonesty can end your career, and it is your responsibility to stay on the right side of the line. If you are not sure about something, ask.

Regrades

You can request a regrade on any graded item, under the following conditions. First, you need to submit a clear, written statement that explains the request (what was wrong with the grading and why). Second, you must submit your request within one week of when the graded work was returned. Third, we will regrade the entire exam, homework, etc. (so a regrade can potentially decrease your grade.)

Last updated: 2015-12-03 18:49:19 -0500 [validate xhtml]