CS202-003: Policies and Grading

CS202-003: Policies and Grading

Exams

Unless stated otherwise, all exams above will be closed book. The midterm and the final exam will cover material from class meetings, labs, readings, homeworks, and any other assigned material.

Grading

Your final grade will be determined by the following weights:

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, unless explicitly noted otherwise.

Turn-in policy, slack days, and lateness

Late homeworks will not be accepted. We will drop your lowest two homework scores.

Labs will be accepted until a week after they are due. That is, we require that you turn in labs no later than 7 days after they are due, at the same hour as the original lab. We call that day and hour the lab’s drop-dead time; please forgive the expression.

Late labs incur penalties. However, you have 5 slack days that forestall the penalty clock. Here are the details:

If you do not hand in an assignment, or hand in a blank assignment, you get a 0 for that assignment. It is much better for you to hand in an assignment that receives a C for lateness than to simply give up on the assignment.

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

  1. Illness or genuine crisis. Crisis requires a supporting note from campus authorities. The instructor will not look at such notes; instead, bring the note to the Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS), who will communicate with the instructor. An illness exemption does not require a doctor’s note, per university policy. However, similar to the crisis case, the instructor will keep students’ medical issues at a remove; thus, anything other than a routine request will be routed to the Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS) to approve. And, students found to be requesting illness exceptions on a spurious basis will face sanctions.
  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, friends requiring support, work on research publications, etc.).

Collaboration, source material, and academic integrity

Here is this class's collaboration and integrity policy.

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, if the assignment is done in pairs). 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.

Guidelines for Using AI Tools

Prohibited Uses

Allowed Uses (for Labs 2 and onwards only)

Citation Requirements

Chat History Logging:

Code Citation:

// AI-assisted (chat_history/loop_syntax_query.txt)
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
    printf("%d\n", i);
}
// End of AI-assisted section

Source Citation in answers.txt: For each AI-assisted part, provide:

  1. A brief description of what you asked
  2. The filename of the relevant chat history
  3. How you used or modified the AI’s suggestion.

Important Notes

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 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.)