Course Policies

Workload

The course consists of the following elements:

Lectures: There will be 27 lectures (plus an in-class midterm). Attendance and participation is expected.
Programming Assignments: Roughly every other week (a total of 6, including lab 0), you will have a programming assignment due. All the undergraduate lab machines (and the VM) will have access to the tools and there will be some discussion of them in section. We will use these assignments to reinforce key concepts and will strive to have them be as practical as possible.
Written Assignments: Every other week (a total of 4), you will have a written assignment due that will be mostly problems from the text. We may grade some subset of these problems (rather than all) but will not tell you which in advance. Complete solutions will be made available after the due date.
Reading: We will assign readings from the the course textbook that correspond to lecture topics.
Midterm exam: An in-class exam at approximately the midpoint of the quarter. See the course calendar.
Final exam: During finals week — see the course calendar.

We will try to ensure that the workload is typical for a four-credit course, namely, nine to twelve hours per week outside of the lectures. If we do not succeed, please let us know in whichever way you feel the most comfortable (person-to-person, e-mail, anonymous feedback) and explain which parts of the course are causing you to spend too much time non-productively.

We have structured the course so that spending a few hours per day will maximize your efficiency. You will work this way in the real world—you cannot cram a three-month design assignment into the last night—so you may as well work this way now. Plus, you will understand the material better. If you leave the homework for the day before it is due you will not have time to ask questions when (not if) the software misbehaves.

Your assignments must be neat and legible. We will not spend time trying to decipher messy work. We urge you to use the graphical and word processing tools that are readily available to you in all the labs in the department.

Grading

We will compute your course grade as follows:

20%: written assignments
35%: programming assignments
45%: exams (15% midterm, 30% final)

We do not expect to deviate from this, but reserve the right to make small changes, such as an additional piece of work that contributes slightly toward your grade.

Assignments

Your written and programming assignments are due at the specified time on the assigned due date. You are allocated a total of 3 late days for the the quarter to utilize should the need arise. A late day is defined as the 24 hour period after an assignment's due date (i.e., num_late_days = ceil(hours_late / 24) ). An exception is made for weekends, which count as a single late day. That is, if an assignment is due at 5pm on Friday, if you submit it before Sunday at 5pm it will only count as one day late (submitting by 5pm on Monday would count as TWO days late). After you have used the late days afforded to you, you will lose 10% of the maximum possible credit for each day an assignment is overdue. Written assignments will not be accepted after solutions have been published (usually within a couple of days of the due date). Programming assignments will not be accepted after the assignment has been graded.

Written assignment problems will be graded on a random basis. To get full credit for an assignment, you must, of course, submit solutions for each assigned problem. Only a subset of the problems may be graded in detail. You will not know in advance which problems this will be—so make sure to do all of them. You are strongly encouraged to review the assignment solutions to ensure you understood all the problems whether they are graded or not and make sure to do so carefully before questioning a grade with either the instructor or the teaching assistants.

Re-grade Policy

If you have a question about an assignment or exam that was returned to you, please don't hesitate to ask a TA or the instructor about it during their office hours. Learning from our mistakes is often one of the most memorable ways of learning!

If after discussing your question with a TA or the instructor you feel that your work was misunderstood or otherwise should be looked at again to see if an appropriate grade was given we ask that you submit a written re-grade request as follows:

Submit a written summary describing why the work should be looked at again. For assignments or exams submitted and graded on paper, you should submit the original paper version of the assignment/exam along with a written regrade request (which can be neatly handwritten). For work that was electronically submitted and graded, an email re-grade request is appropriate.
Submit it to the instructor or to a TA.
Re-grade requests should be submitted within a week of when the assignment was returned.

Note that when a written assignment, programming assignment, or test is re-graded, the entire work will be re-graded. This means that while it is possible to regain some points, it is also possible to lose points.

Collaboration

Unless specifically stated otherwise, we encourage collaboration on homework and labs, provided (1) You spend at least 15 minutes on each and every problem alone, before discussing it with others, and (2) You write up each and every problem/program yourself, using your own words/code, and understand the solution fully. We can learn a lot from working with each other, and it can make the course more fun.

Copying someone else's homework is cheating (see below), as is copying the homework from another source (prior year's notes, sources on the web, etc.). Keep in mind that the overall goal is for *YOU* to learn the material so you will be prepared for the exams and for job interviews etc. in the future. The assignments are designed to help you gain that understanding. Copying turns the assignments into an exercise that is a silly waste of both your time and ours, save us both by not doing it.

Cheating consists of sharing code or solutions to assignments either by copying, retyping, looking at, or supplying a copy of a file. Coaching (where you help a friend write a program line-by-line or figure out the exact text to put in defuser.txt or an exploit string) is another form of cheating. Copying code from a similar course at another university or using solutions/code on the web is also cheating. Communicating your solution with another student via electronic or non-electronic means constitutes cheating. To avoid creating situations where copying can arise, never electronically share or post your solution files. It is NOT cheating to explain how to use the software tools or help others with interpreting high-level design issues.

Cheating is a very serious offense. If you are caught cheating, you can expect a failing grade and initiation of a cheating case in the University system. Basically, cheating is an insult to the instructor and course staff, to the department and major program, and most importantly, to you and your fellow students. If you feel that you are having a problem with the material, or don't have time to finish an assignment, or have any number of other reasons to cheat, then talk with the instructor. Just don't cheat.

If in doubt about what might constitute cheating, send the instructor email describing the situation and we will be happy to clarify it for you.

For more information, you may consult the department’s Academic Misconduct Policy.

Extra Credit

We will keep track of any extra credit items you attempt on labs and homeworks. You won't see these affecting your grades for individual homeworks and labs, but they will be accumulated over the course and will be used to bump up borderline grades at the end of the quarter.

The bottom line is that these will only have a small effect on your overall grade (possibly none if you are not on a borderline) and you want to be sure you have completed the non-extra credit portions of the lab/homework in perfect form before attempting any extra credit. They are meant to be fun extensions to the assignments, so if you complete some extra credit it *may* positively impact your overall grade.