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COMP 285

Collaboration Policy and Honor Code

This course is designed to help you all. If you find yourself in a position where you feel trapped or encouraged to cheat, please reach out instead to ask for help.

That being said, here are the expectations around academic honesty. We know many students find it difficult to define the line between cheating and getting help so here is the rule we will use: submitting code as your own work that you cannot explain or reproduce in a controlled environment is academic dishonesty. Here are some concrete guidelines to help:

  • OK: Discussing the problems (”what does this mean?”) and discussing solution approaches in general terms (”try using a recursion”).
  • OK: Looking up syntax online, though we encourage you to increasingly push yourself toward coding without this resource as you won’t have access to it in an interview setting.
  • OK: Posting on GroupMe/Piazza/etc. for feedback is okay as long as you are not sharing code that reveals answers to other students.
  • NOT OK: Posting or copying answers to any assignments or assessments (for example, on Chegg or Canvas) is never okay.
  • NOT OK: Possessing solutions to exact homework questions other than the ones you have written yourself.
  • NOT OK: Blindly following instructions is never okay i.e. if a classmate tells you ”Do X, then do Y, then Z” without understanding why, even if you implement it yourself.
  • NOT OK: In general, copying any code from anywhere that you do not fully understand.
  • NOT OK: It is also academic dishonesty if you are on the other side of the transaction i.e. giving a classmate instructions or sharing your code for a classmate to copy.

We will be using plagiarism detection software.

If we suspect academic dishonesty has occurred, we will ask you to explain/demonstrate your work to me in a controlled environment and from there proceed to take any necessary actions.

Academic integrity is critical to maintaining high standards within the academic community. All students enrolled in the College of Engineering are expected to demonstrate academic integrity when submitting course-related work (e.g., assignments, quizzes, individual projects, and exams). Academic integrity violations, when submitting course-related work, will result in the loss of credit for the specific assignment, quiz, individual project or exam, or a grade of “F” for the course.

Repeated academic integrity violations may lead to dismissal from the University. To review the University’s Academic Dishonesty Policy, please see section I.F of the 2021-2022 Student Conduct Handbook, here

Submission Policy

All homework submissions must be typed and submitted to Gradescope by 11:59 pm Pacific Time on the due date. We will not be accepting or grading any handwritten submissions. We highly recommend using LaTeX, and we will be posting the LaTeX source code of the homework assignments so you can borrow the LaTex code from the problem statements.

Homework Policy

Homeworks will be assigned weekly. See the schedule for specific date. In general homework will be released after lecture on Mondays, and will cover material from the previous week as well as the Monday lecture.

Generally, the homework will be due on the following Sunday, at 11:59pm. They will include both conceptual and coding components. The lowest 2 homeworks will be dropped from your grade.

If you have extenuating circumstances that may warrant an extension, please email us as soon as possible. Advanced notice is valuable - the sooner the better! We will try to be as accommodating as possible.

Late Policy

For each 24-hour period that homework is late, it will be eligible to receive 10% less points. For example, if you submitted 48 hours (2 days) late, your homework grade would be capped at 80%. After 5 days, please reach out to the course staff to discuss any extenuating circumstances so that we can work towards a solution. At that time, you’d only be eligible to receive up to 50% credit.

Regrade Policy

You may submit a regrade request for homework on Gradescope. Please include a thorough description of the error that the grader made. You must submit a regrade request within 1 week of receiving your grade, by end of day (i.e. 11:59 pm). Some notes:

  • We reserve the right to regrade the entire assignment on a regrade request. This means you may lose more points on other problems if we discover grading errors in the other direction.
  • Your regrade request will go to the TA who graded your work originally and the instructor.
  • Legitimate regrade requests include:
    • The points were not added correctly.
    • The comments say I’m missing part (c), but it was actually on a different page.
    • The comments say that my algorithm is incorrect with this particular case, but I implemented my algorithm and it does work in that case.
  • Illegitimate regrade requests include:
    • I disagree with the rubric; I should have gotten more partial credit for my solution.
    • I understand that my solution wasn’t clear, but what I meant to say was correct.

Participation / In-Class Exercises

Each class will include a daily in-class exercise that will require individual or group participation and cover material from that class. Attendance and participation in in-class exercises will be tracked via in-class exercise submission. Submissions will be accepted for 24 hours after the lecture has ended. You will need to complete at least 80% of the in-class exercises on time. The lowest 5 in-class exercises will be dropped from your grade.

In the first four weeks of the course, everyone is required to attend my office hours at least once. This attendance will contribute to the Participation grade.

Quiz Policy

The first lecture of each week will also have a 10 minute mini-quiz on material from the previous week. We recognize it’s not ideal, but this will give us an indication on how well we taught each lecture’s topic, how everyone is doing, and whether or not we need to revisit certain topics. The lowest 4 quizzes will be dropped from your grade.