Work in the "homework" category will be graded loosely. To receive credit, you must make a credible effort to solve the problem; mistakes will not be penalized, in general. Everything else will be graded strictly.
Late homeworks will not be accepted. To give you flexibility, we will drop your lowest two homework scores.
Labs will be accepted until the last day of class. Each student gets a total of 120 late hours for the lab assignments. This is five 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. If an assignment that is completed in a pair is late, both partners use late hours. The labs have different weights; we will apply your late hours in the way that is best for you (but you should still keep track of your balance).
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 D C (labs that are X% correct and more than 120 hours late would get X%
of the points that a D 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.
UPDATE, 2/26/15: We are changing the floor for Labs 4 and onward to reflect the effective minimum passing grade of C. (We cannot adjust the policy for the prior labs since students made decisions on the basis of the old policy.)
If you do not hand in an assignment, or hand in a blank assignment,
you get a 0 for that assignment. It is waaaay better for you to
hand in an assignment that receives a D C for lateness than to simply give
up on the assignment (averaged-in zeroes are damaging).
Exemptions of the lateness rules will be allowed in three cases:
No extensions will be given for any other reason (including job interviews, business trips, work on research publications, etc.).
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.
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.
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.
You can submit any graded item for a regrade, under the following conditions. First, you need to submit a clear, written statement that explains the request (what was wrong 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: Mon May 04 11:24:46 -0400 2015 [validate xhtml]