Course Policies

Last updated: Tue, 8 Sep 2020 09:33:46 -0400

This page describes the policies of the course. Please read it carefully.

Academic Honesty

Students are expected to follow the UMB Academic Honesty Policy.

In particular, note the list of Academic Honesty Violations.

Violations may result in failing grades, loss of course credit, and will be reported to the appropriate departments and the Dean of Students (DOS) Office.

Collaboration Policy

Discussing homework with other students is allowed.

You may also consult other reference sources to learn course materials.

Any work you submit, however, must be your own.

Distribution of Course Materials

Course materials may not be distributed without permission from the instructor.

This includes mailing lists and websites like Stack Overflow, Chegg, Course Hero, etc.

Infractions will be considered academic honesty violations.

Grading

The lowest homework grade will be dropped before final grade calculation.

There are no exams in this course.

Homework Submission Policy

Homework is submitted to Gradescope, under the appropriate assignment label.

Homework solutions may be resubmitted as many times as needed, up to the deadline.

In addition to your solution files, each homework submission must include:

• a Makefile that sets up the tools needed to run your solutions,

• and a README file with the following information:

  • Time spent (in hours) on the assignment,

  • The names of other students you worked with,

  • and any other books or websites you used.

See the Collaboration Policy, and each individual assignment for more details.

Late Policy

Homework is due Tuesdays at 23:59 EST.

In general, late homework is not accepted, for many reasons:

• The entire course is interconnected. For example, we may discuss or present solutions in lecture right after a homework is due. Disrupting the course because of a late assignment is unfair to the rest of the class.

• Having to dealing with late homework also means that the course staff (just one instructor at the moment) has less time for office hours, discussion boards, etc.

• Finally, because homework is assigned continually, a late submission will cause work to overlap with subsequent assignments, making it difficult to catch up.

Of course, things do go wrong. Therefore, we have adopted the following late policy.

Over the course of the semester, you can use up to three late days. These can be allocated however you want (all to one assignment, one to each assignment, etc.).

We strongly prefer you not use more than one per assignment, because it disrupts grading; nevertheless, if you do need to take more than a day on an assignment, you can.

Don’t ask for permission; don’t tell us your reason: any time you miss the submission deadline, we will assume you are using a late day. Each part of a day that you are late counts as a full day. However, if you take more than one day, you must inform us (post a private message on the forum) so we can keep track of your submission.

No exceptions allowed unless you have a Dean’s Note indicating family/health emergency.

Note: The course has enough homeworks that missing one is probably not going to affect your course grade too much (and the lowest grade is dropped anyways). It is far worse to fall behind. Therefore, if you miss a deadline, you may be best off catching up with the content (through class or talking to course staff) and moving on.

Lecture Policy

Lectures meet online via Zoom.

For security reasons, the University requires accessing Zoom lectures via Blackboard.

• Lectures may be recorded. Please contact course staff with issues about this.

• Keep audio muted unless speaking.

• Please be presentable.

  Though video is not always required, you should turn it on when called on, which I may do randomly. This way I can still get to know each of you in this virtual course.

Each lecture will be associated with reading from some sections of textbook.

Students should come to class prepared with questions from the reading.

Quizzes

We may occasionally have some very short quizzes in lecture (one or two questions).

All quizzes are open book but you will only have a few minutes to complete it.

Quizzes should be easy and are designed to make sure everyone is caught up on at least the most basic course materials.