| 40% | Lab assignments (~7) |
| 15% | Quizzes (about two or three) |
| 15% | Midterm project |
| 25% | Final project |
| 05% | Class participation, Clicker responses, and Attendance |
Lab assignments are submitted electronically using git, and are typically due by 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday nights. You may submit your assignment multiple times, but only the final submission will be graded.
The first few labs will be individual assignments to ensure that everyone knows the basics of the course material. Later, we will transition to partnered lab assignments to allow you to work on more complex problems.
To help with cases of minor illnesses, athletic conflicts, or other short-term time limitations, all students start the course with three late assignment days to be used at your discretion, with no questions asked. To use your extra time, you must email me after you have completed the lab and pushed to your repository. You do not need to inform anyone ahead of time. When you use late days, you should still expect to work on the newly-released lab during the following lab section meeting. Lab time will not be used to answer questions about the previous lab. Your late days will be counted at the granularity of full days and will be tracked on a per-student (NOT per-partnership) basis. That is, if you turn in an assignment five minutes after the deadline, it counts as using one day. For partnered labs, using a late day counts towards the late days for each partner. In the rare cases in which only one partner has unused late days, that partner's late days may be used, barring a consistent pattern of abuse. If you feel that you need an extension on an assignment or that you are unable to attend class for two or more meetings due to a medical condition (e.g., extended illness, concussion, hospitalization) or other emergency, you must contact the dean's office and your instructors. Faculty will coordinate with the deans to determine and provide the appropriate accommodations. Note that for illnesses, the College's medical excuse policy, states that you must be seen and diagnosed by the Worth Health Center if you would like them to contact your class dean with corroborating medical information.
In this course, limited collaboration in planning and thinking through solutions to problems is allowed and encouraged, but no collaboration is allowed in writing up solutions. Your submitted write-up is your own. Please list your discussion partners and the extent of your discussions at the beginning of your write-up.
Note: in the following paragraphs, "code" refers to all homework solutions, including written programs but also proofs, analysis, written reports, etc.
Academic honesty is required in all your work. Under no circumstances may you hand in work done with (or by) someone else under your own name. Your code should never be shared with anyone; you may not examine or use code belonging to someone else, nor may you let anyone else look at or make a copy of your code. This includes, but is not limited to, obtaining solutions from students who previously took the course or code that can be found online. You may not share solutions after the due date of the assignment.
Discussing ideas and approaches to problems with others on a general level is fine (in fact, we encourage you to discuss general strategies with each other), but you should never read anyone else's code or let anyone else read your code. All code you submit must be your own with the following permissible exceptions: code distributed in class, code found in the course text book, and code worked on with an assigned partner. In these cases, you should always include detailed comments that indicates on which parts of the assignment you received help, and what your sources were.
Failure to abide by these rules constitutes academic dishonesty and will lead to a hearing of the College Judiciary Committee. According to the Faculty Handbook: "Because plagiarism is considered to be so serious a transgression, it is the opinion of the faculty that for the first offense, failure in the course and, as appropriate, suspension for a semester or deprivation of the degree in that year is suitable; for a second offense, the penalty should normally be expulsion."
We will routinely run plagiarism detection software on your lab assignment submissions.
The spirit of this policy applies to all course work, including code, homework solutions (e.g., proofs, analysis, written reports), and exams. Please contact me if you have any questions about what is permissible in this course.
Students must strictly adhere to the following policy, which applies to all exams taken in a Computer Science course at Swarthmore:
Exam takers must place all non-essential items at the front of the room (or other designated area). Unless otherwise permitted, students may not have any electronic devices or course materials in their possession during the entirety of the exam. This includes cell phones, tablets, laptops, smart watches, course notes, articles and books, among others. These items should be placed at the front of the room near the proctor. If you need to leave the room during the exam, you must obtain permission from an instructor first. Any non-permitted discussion or aide in regards to exam material will result in immediate forfeiture of the exam and a report to the College Judiciary Committee. Please discuss any concerns or accommodations with your instructor prior to starting the exam.