Policies

Grading and late assignments

Your final grade will be computed from the grades on the assignments and final project. The homework projects will account for 85% of the grade, and the final project for 15%. There are no exams.

Programming assignments are due at 11:59 pm on the due date (normally Tuesday) and are accepted with a late penalty until 11:59 pm two days after the due date (normally Thursday). Programs are accepted late as follows:

1. Hand in by late deadline: 10% off score (about 1 letter grade)
2. Hand in within 1 week of due date: graded pass/fail; pass receives 50/100
3. More than 1 week late: no credit

Assignments that are handed in under option 2 will not be graded carefully and may be returned very late. That option is just intended to give you a chance to reduce the effect of zeros averaged into your grade.

Extra credit

For the programming exercises you are welcome to implement extra features for extra credit. Don't expect large numbers of points---the idea is just to encourage you to have fun exploring the material in more depth.

Some ground rules:

• The default behavior of your program must always be a correct implementation of the required features. The presence of extra features must not interfere with correct operation---so include switches to turn on extra features if they change the basic behavior in any way.
• You can only get extra credit if you score at least 95/100 on the basic requirements.
• You can't get more than 10 points of extra credit on any one assignment.

Collaboration

The principle is that an assignment is an academic document, like a journal article. When you turn it in, you are implying that everything in it is your original idea (or is original to you and your partner, if you're handing in as a pair) unless you cite a source for it.

You are welcome (encouraged, even) to discuss the material of this class among yourselves in general terms. But when it comes to the details of the assignments, you need to be working alone. In particular, it's never OK for you to see another student's homework writeup or another team's program code, nor to discuss the solutions to the specific problems in the homeworks.

You're also welcome to read any published sources (books, articles, public web sites) that help you learn. If you find an idea in one of these sources that becomes part of your homework solution, that's fine, but it's imperative that you credit that fact on your homework or in a comment in your code. Otherwise you would be falsely claiming to have invented the idea yourself.

Academic Integrity

In this course we expect complete integrity from everyone. School can be stressful, and your coursework and other factors can put you under a lot of pressure, but that is never a reason for dishonesty. If you feel you can't complete the work on your own, come talk to the professor or the TAs, or your advisor, and we can help you figure out what to do. Think before you hand in!

Clear-cut cases of dishonesty will result in failing the course.

For more information see Cornell's Code of Academic Integrity.

NOTE: Most of these policies are taken verbatim from CS 465.