Work in CS 115 is divided
into two main components:
Each component contributes
50% of a student's grade.
A necessary but not sufficient precondition for passing the course is passing both the lecture component and the project component (described below).
Variation from written guidelines required written approval. Oral-only instructions are only valid as clarification to ambiguous written material, or to supplement for missing written material. You may get tentative approval in a conversation but you are then responsible for following up with a written request to the instructor or TA and the final decision will be written and published.
Specifically, each aspect
of the course contributes the following percentage to the final grade.
Lecture Component (50%):
The lowest article review
grade will be dropped at the end of the quarter.
Project Component (50%):
Passing the project component
requires at minimum a 50% average for your individual contributions to the
project.
Final Examination:
The course does not have a final exam.
Homework, article reviews,
and project deliverables are due at the beginning of class. Due dates are
specified on the course syllabus. Late items
automatically receive no credit (0 points for that assignment). However, one
project deadline can be missed without penalty (one "get out of jail
free" possibility). If you miss the deadline for a deliverable, you'll
have to turn it in along with the next deliverable. So, you can miss one
deadline, but it means you'll have to turn in two deliverables on the next
deadline.
All submissions (homeworks, exams, reviews, project documents) should be handed in on paper at the start of class on the due date.
Project deliverables should also be checked into Subversion in a common format. HTML, PDF, PostScript, any standard form of XML, and plain text will be accepted. Any handwritten or hand-drawn document must be scanned so that an electronic copy exists. For text documents, it's probably easier to just begin in electronic form. Get in the habit of typing notes. For drawings, scanning often makes more sense. For hand-drawn documents, neatness counts, at least in the final version. Having messy drafts is fine, and even expectable, as long as they lead to a neat final drawing.
Each project deliverable
may be corrected, and then submitted for regrading within a week of receiving a
grade for that deliverable. Up to half of all points lost on that deliverable
may be recovered during regrading. This means that if, beyond the one free
late, you miss a deadline, you can get half of the score you'd normally get on
it by "resubmitting" it after the deadline, even if it is technically
the first time you have turned it in.
Homework assignments and
article reviews are performed individually. Project deliverables are a joint
effort by each project team.
Any confirmed academic
dishonesty including but not limited to copying another's homework or article
review, cheating on exams, and copying project work without giving credit to
the author of the work products, will result in a no-pass or failing grade.
Students are encouraged to read the campus policies regarding
academic integrity.
Occasionally, one or more
group members contribute less effort to the project than others. In CS 115,
this is viewed as a management challenge: how to motivate and coordinate
under-performing team members. Groups experiencing this problem are encouraged
to meet with the Professor or TA to discuss management tactics.
If, at the end of the quarter, multiple managerial approaches have been tried without success, it is possible to ask the Professor to assess the relative contributions of each team member. The Professor sends out an email questionnaire asking each member to rate the relative contributions of every team member (including themselves) by dividing 100 points among all team members. For example, if there are four team members, and each member contributed equally, each would receive 25 points. Based on this data, the Professor may, at his discretion, modify the total project grades of one or more team members.
Note that if no effort was made to attempt managerial solutions to the problem, then no reassessment of course grades will be permitted. This reflects the viewpoint that the situation reflects a failure to address an obvious managerial problem, as well as the failure of some team members to contribute their share of the work.