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.

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 violates academic honesty for this class.

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

While peer instruction can be immensely useful, it can also harm. Once you have an idea, or you found a solution, resist giving hints to your peers or leading them towards the answer. You are not helping them by doing so. Direct them towards the TAs who are trained to give help.

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.

Flex days and late policy

Assignments and quizzes are due at the specified time. Gradescope will not accept assignments submitted past the due time. To provide reasonable flexibility with deadlines, 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”), so that I can enter an extension in Gradescope.

Beyond the use of flex days, quizzes and assignments submitted late will incur a penalty of 10% per day, for each day of late submission. For example, 1-24 hours late: 10%, 25-48 hours late: 20%. Assignments will not be accepted more than three days (72 hours) late,unless alternate arrangements have been approved in advance of the deadline.

Emergencies and personal circumstances

If you have any significant circumstances that you forsee will impact your ability to meet a deadline, please let me know as soon as possible so that we can make a plan. Note that the circumstances have to be significant (for e.g. taking two classes with homework deadlines teh same day does 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.