Grading Scheme¶
Course grades will be based on homework, project and a quiz. (No final exam!)
- 0% - Class participation (expected, but not tracked)
- 20% - Homework
- 20% - Quiz (in class)
- 60% - Project
Letter grades for the course will be subject to the instructor's evaluation of your overall class performance, generally based on this standard scale:
| Cutoff | Letter |
|---|---|
| > 90 | A-, A, A+ |
| > 80 | B-, B, B+ |
| > 70 | C-, C, C+ |
| > 60 | D, D+ |
| < 60 | F |
The cutoff for assigning -/+ to each grade letter is further subject to the instructor's evaluation of your overall class performance. Do not expect a curve in this course.
Homework Grading¶
Homework are to be done individually. Each homework assignment will be assigned a point value; the overall homework assignment grade will be computed as your total points earned divided by the total achievable points
Late Days
You have a budget of five late days; however you can only use at most 2 late day for any particular homework deadline. To use a late day, you need to "request" it through a private post on Piazza.
Late days are a valuable commodity and you should use them sparingly. They are primarily intended to help you deal with unexpected circumstances, so you should not make them part of your normal planning process.
Project Grading¶
Each iteration of the project will be assigned a point value; the overall project grade will be computed as your total points earned divided by the total achievable points. The grading will generally be based on "your plan" for that iteration; your progress is measured against your plan.
Warning
There is no grace period (late days) for iteration deadlines.
Academic Integrity¶
The strength of the university depends on academic and personal integrity. In this course, you must be honest and truthful. Ethical violations include plagiarism, reuse of assignments, improper use of the Internet and electronic devices, unauthorized collaboration, alteration of graded assignments, forgery and falsification, lying, facilitating academic dishonesty, and unfair competition. Report any violations you witness to the instructor. You may consult the associate dean of student affairs and/or the chairman of the Ethics Board beforehand. See the guide on "Academic Ethics for Undergraduates" and the Ethics Board Web site (http://ethics.jhu.edu) as well as the CS Department's academic integrity code.
Cheating is immoral. Cheaters that are caught will be punished as is required under University policy. Please report all instances of cheating you see to the professor. Clear-cut cases of cheating will be reported to the Undergraduate Academic Ethics Board, or to the WSE Dean if the student is a graduate student. If a student is found guilty, this information is placed on their permanent academic record and suspension or expulsion may result. If some action seems a grey area to you, please ask first before proceeding!
Acknowledge collaboration and assistance
If you use code/material from online resources (or from people outside of your group-except for Prof/CA) please cite it.
Homework Integrity Policy¶
For the homework, you are encouraged to work on assignments with a team of other students in the class; however, you must not simply copy/paste (or, copy/paste/minor edit) from another person's answer. In other words, while you can work closely together on a problem you each must produce your own answers with your own hands/fingers. A good place to draw the line here is to never email or otherwise electronically share any files, or photocopy any papers, for other students. Eyeball sharing on the other hand is encouraged (as long as it doesn't involve direct copying).
Project Integrity Policy¶
Since the course project is open-ended, it is easy to "re-use" knowledge that you may already have, or to re-use other code you may find on the web or obtain through others. Any such instance of re-use is encouraged but must be documented in your submitted documents. Examples include: writing a Java version of a project you did last summer in C++; using an ftp server library you found on github; or, writing a rip-off of an existing PC application. Re-use is fantastic, as long as you explicitly acknowledge your sources. If in doubt about whether an instance of re-use should be documented, e-mail or talk to the professor.
Warning
Reuse of code which is not so acknowledged is considered cheating.