Honor code and group work

Collaboration and discussion are crucial for this class. You are encouraged to engage with the problems and discuss with peers as much as you can. You will most likely find that you will gain a better understanding of the material by discussing the problems with peers. Our goal is to ensure that the collaboration is appropriate and effective, and that you become an independent problem solver capable to do work on your own.

All students are expected to be familiar with and to comply with the department’s collaboration policy and the four levels of collaboration it outlines. Specifically for this class,

  • In-class work and labs: All in-class work towards understanding the lectures, including lab problems, practice problems and self-quizzes are (unless otherwise specified) at collaboration-level 0; that is, no restrictions.

  • Assignments: The assignments are at collaboration-level 1; that is, verbal collaboration without solution sharing. You are allowed and encouraged to discuss ideas with other class members, but the communication should be verbal. No one is allowed to take notes during the discussion (being able to recreate the solution later from memory is proof that you actually understood it). Communication needs to stay at a high level and cannot include sharing pseudo-code for the problem.

  • Quizzes and exams: At collaboration-level 3 (no collaboration allowed, professor clarifications only).

Internet policy

There are lots of resources online, such as lecture notes, animations, visualizations, practice problems, video recordings, which you are encouraged to explore to help you understand the material. However, you must be careful not to search the internet for specific problems with the intent to get hints for their solutions. Searching for the assignment problems on the internet, and this includes ChatGPT, violates academic honesty for this class.

Remember that you are responsible for reading, understanding, and adhering to the department policy. If you have any questions about any aspects of the policy, please do not hesitate to ask for clarification.

Assignment Partner Policy

You may work on the assignments with one partner (teams of at most 2 people). You can have the same partner for all assignments, or you can change partners. You and your partner(s) will work together on the assignment throughout the whole process, you will write it and review it together, and will submit one assignment. The assignment must be a true joint effort, equally owned, created and understood by both partners. Specifically splitting the assignment and working on the problems separately is not allowed and violates the honor code for the class.

Late policy

Quizzes and assignments submitted past the posted deadline will be accepted but will incur a penalty of .4% per hour (9.6% per day), which will be automatically applied in Canvas. This is to encourage you to keep up with the class material and assignments. Most topics in this class build directly on prior topics, so it is critical not to fall behind!

Flex days

To provide some flexibility you are allotted three flex days for the semester, each of which may be used to submit an assignment or a quiz up to 24 hours late (up to 72 hours late if all three flex days are applied all at once). For a team assignment, applying a flex day uses a flex day from each group member’s allotment. If you want to use a Flex day please message me on Slack clearly stating which flex days you want use and for which assignment/quiz (for e.g. “I would like to use 1st flex day for assignment 4”).

Since Canvas does not implement Flex days at the moment, at the end of the semester I will go through your assignments and quizzes and I will waive three late penalties (corresponding to three flex days).

Emergencies

Exceptions to the late policy will be made in case of significant circumstances (such as you are sick in bed, concussion, etc). If anything arises that you forsee will impact your ability to meet a deadline, please let me know as soon as possible.

Note that the circumstances have to be significant (for e.g. taking two classes with homework deadlines the same day, or traveling for athletics events or hackathons, do not count as an unusual circumstance).

Regrades

You can submit a regrade request within 7 days of receiving your grade. You should do this only if you believe there is a grading error, not simply because you want a higher grade. If the assignment was handled via Gradescope, you can submit the Regrade request on Gradescope. Otherwise, send me a message on Slack.

Communication

All class communication will happen via Slack. Rather than sending me an email, please send instead a private message on Slack.