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. Discussing ideas and approaches to problems with others on a general level is encouraged, but you should never share your solutions with anyone else nor allow others to share solutions with you. You may not examine solutions belonging to someone else, nor may you let anyone else look at or make a copy of your solutions. This includes, but is not limited to, obtaining solutions from students who previously took the course or solutions that can be found online. You may not share information about your solution in such a manner that a student could reconstruct your solution in a meaningful way (such as by dictation, providing a detailed outline, or discussing specific aspects of the solution). You may not share your solutions even after the due date of the assignment.
In your solutions, you are permitted to include material that was distributed in class, material which is found in the course textbook, and material developed by or with an assigned partner. In these cases, you should always include detailed comments indicating on which parts of the assignment you received help and what your sources were.
When working on tests, exams, or similar assessments, you are not permitted to communicate with anyone about the exam during the entire examination period (even if you have already submitted your work). You are not permitted to use any resources to complete the exam other than those explicitly permitted by course policy. (For instance, you may not look at the course website during the exam unless explicitly permitted by the instructor when the exam is distributed.)
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."
This policy applies to all course work, including but not limited to code, written solutions (e.g. proofs, analyses, reports, etc.), exams, and so on. This is not meant to be an enumeration of all possible violations; students are responsible for seeking clarification if there is any doubt about the level of permissible communication.
The general ethos of this policy is that actions that shortcut the learning process are forbidden while actions that promote learning are encouraged. Studying lecture materials together, for example, provides an additional avenue for learning and is encouraged. Using a classmate’s solution, however, is prohibited because it avoids the learning process entirely. If you have any questions about what is or is not permissible, please contact your instructor.
Swarthmore’s CS35 course will start out remotely in Spring 2022.
To provide a good learning experience in this setting, we will use a variety of software.
Throughout this course, we will use a CS35 Slack organization as our primary means of communication. Slack is a closed direct messaging system similar to Discord and is designed for team collaborations. On this platform, you will be able to send direct messages to your instructors and other members of the course. You can use Slack to discuss course materials, talk to your classmates, and get help from course staff during office hours, labs, and ninja sessions. Please see the CS35 Slack Guide for information on how this will work.
Swarthmore College offers a course management system called Moodle. Your Swarthmore College login will give you access to the Moodle site. While we will use Slack for our instant messaging and discussion, Moodle will be used to post course announcements and to administer quizzes as needed.
We will use Zoom to conduct video meetings as needed. As a Swarthmore College student, you are covered under the college’s Zoom plan and can use your Swarthmore credentials to create and join video chats.
During the first two weeks of the semester, pre-recorded lecture videos will be posted as needed to the course schedule page.
Lecture (CPSC 035 01) is scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:55am - 11:10am in SCI CHANGHOU.
Labs are scheduled as follows.
Every student taking CS35 must also be enrolled in a corresponding lab section. During lab sessions, we introduce the lab assignment you will complete that week; we may also work through a small exercise to illustrate a tool that you will be using during the assignment.
Throughout the course, there are two forms for lab assignments: individual labs and team labs. The first labs will be individual labs to ensure that everyone is familiar with the basics of C++ and the course material. Later, we will transition to labs completed in two person teams to allow you to work on larger, more interesting projects and to ensure that each student has experience working in groups to build software.
Grades in the course are weighted as follows:
| Assignments | 50% |
| Midterm Exam | 20% |
| Final Exam | 25% |
| Class Participation | 5% |
Quizzes will be administered on Moodle as needed.
All quizzes are open-book, open-note, and open-Internet, but your answers must be your own writing and ideas. If you have any difficulties in taking a quiz (technical or otherwise), please contact your instructor as soon as possible to make appropriate arrangements.
Lab assignments are due on Wednesday nights (at 11:59 pm ET) unless an exception is noted in the schedule.
You are strongly encouraged to start lab assignments early and to attend the ninja sessions for extra practice.
You must submit your assignments electronically by pushing to your assigned git repository. You may push your assignment multiple times, and a history of previous submissions will be saved. You are encouraged to push your work regularly.
To help with cases of minor illnesses, athletic conflicts, or other short-term time limitations, all students start the course with two “late days” to be used at your discretion, with no questions asked. To use your extra time, you must email your professor after you have completed the lab and pushed to your repository. You do not need to inform anyone ahead of time. These late days do not affect your due dates for other assignments, so you should be prepared to work on the next assignment during the following lab meeting. The professor and ninjas will prioritize answering questions related to the current lab assignment.
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.
If you feel that you need an extension on an assignment or that you are unable to attend class or lab 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.
There will be a midterm exam and a final exam.
At this time, we plan to administer both exams in person, but do leave open the possibility of administering exams virtually via Moodle.
This portion of your grade is established based upon your engagement in the course. It is not graded stringently; participation is effectively a free boost to your grade as long as you:
Students who are routinely absent from lab or otherwise do not interact meaningfully with the course will not receive full credit here. This is an easy way to improve your grade; don’t miss out!
If you believe you need accommodations for a disability or a chronic medical condition, please contact Student Disability Services via email at studentdisabilityservices@swarthmore.edu to arrange an appointment to discuss your needs. As appropriate, the office will issue students with documented disabilities or medical conditions a formal Accommodations Letter. Since accommodations require early planning and are not retroactive, please contact Student Disability Services as soon as possible. For details about the accommodations process, visit the Student Disability Services website. You are also welcome to contact me (Michael Wehar) privately to discuss your academic needs. However, all disability-related accommodations must be arranged, in advance, through Student Disability Services.