Policies

Grading
1. Grading Scale
2. Resubmissions & Late Work
Collaboration & Academic Misconduct

Unless otherwise noted, all assessments are due at 11:59:59PM PDT. If you have trouble submitting an assessment and the deadline is approaching, you should email all the files to Omar and your TA before the deadline so we have your submission on record. Submissions received after the due date may not be accepted even if there were technical difficulties turning in the assessment if you did not email us your solution before the cutoff.

All assessments will be submitted and graded via Ed.

Make sure you're familiar with the following policies

Grading

Grading Scale

Work in CSE 142 will be graded using an ESNU scale:

E (Exemplary): Work that meets all requirements and displays full mastery of all learning goals and material.
S (Satisfactory): Work that meets all requirements and displays at least partial mastery of all learning goals as well as full mastery of core learning goals.
N (Not Yet Satisfactory): Work that does not meet some requirements and/or displays developing or incomplete mastery of at least some learning goals and material.
U (Unassessable): Work that is missing, does not demonstrate meaningful effort, or does not provide enough evidence to determine a level of mastery.

Take-home assessments will be graded using the full ESNU scale. Checkpoints, reflections, culminating assessments will be graded using only S/U; no grades of E or N will be awarded on these assignments.

It is important to note that, under this system, it is the work that is assessed as a proxy for the student. This is an imperfect system, but is necessary to manage a course of the size and scale of CSE 142. It is in your best interest to ensure that your work accurately reflects your mastery by being careful and diligent in following instructions, meeting deadlines, and understanding requirements.

Resubmissions & Late Work

Learning from mistakes is an important part of mastering any skill, especially for novices. To enable this, you are allowed to revise and resubmit your work on take-home assessments to demonstrate improved mastery after your initial submission. Resubmissions are subject to the following rules:

You may not resubmit a take-home assessment for which you did not make an initial submission.
You may not resubmit a take-home assessment for which you received a U in Behavior.
You may not resubmit a take-home assessment until you have received feedback on your previous submission (including resubmissions) of that assessment. (Generally one week after the due date.)
Resubmissions must be submitted through an appropriate Google Form and acoompanied by a short write-up describing the changes made. This will both support you in being deliberate about the changes you make and ease grading of resubmissions by making the changes clear.
A maximum of one take-home assessment can be resubmitted each week.
A take-home assessment that has been found to involve academic misconduct may not be resubmitted (see below).

Only take-home assessments may be resubmitted. Due to the constraints of the summer quarter schedule, you will not have an opportunity to resubmit your last (8th) take-home assessment. More details on resubmitting can be found on the Resubmissions & Regrades page.

Late Work

You MUST make an initial submission for each take-home assessment by the published deadline to receive a grade other than U on every dimension of that assessment (see grading scale below). Even if your work is incomplete, you are highly encouraged to submit whatever work you have so that you can receive feedback. You will then be able to act on that feedback and resubmit (see the above resubmission policy).

Checkpoints, reflections, and culminating assessments will generally not be accepted after their published deadlines. Please see the policy on extenuating circumstances for more information.

Challenge Checkpoints

While checkpoints are not accepted after their published deadlines, we do provide a method of making up checkpoints that you weren't able to complete by their published deadline in the form of challenge checkpoints. Each week's checkpoint has a corresponding challenge checkpoint that can be completed to make up a missed checkpoint. Challenge checkpoints will be released the Monday after a checkpoint is due, and will be due the last day of instruction of the quarter (August 20th). A given week's checkpoint can only be used to make up that week's corresponding checkpoint, it cannot be used to make up any other week's checkpoint (i.e. Week 1 Challenge Checkpoint can only be used to make up Week 1 Checkpoint, Week 2 Challenge Checkpoint can only be used to make up Week 2 Checkpoint, etc.). Additionally, challenge checkpoints are not worth any extra credit if you've completed the corresponding week's checkpoint on time (although you are welcome to do them anyways for some extra challenging practice if you'd like to). Due to the constraints of the summer quarter, there will be no corresponding challenge checkpoint for Week 9's checkpoint.

Take-home Assessment Grading

Take-home assessments will be graded on four dimensions:

Behavior: Does the input and output functionality of the submission match that described in the specification
Structure & Design: Is the code effectively broken down into methods and are those methods well-written to create a well-structured program/class
Use of Language Features: Are all relevant Java language constructs used effectively and appropriately
Documentation & Readability: Does the code conform to all code quality guidelines for this course

Work will be assigned a grade on each dimension using the ESNU scale, resulting in four ESNU grades per assessment. The table below summarizes the expectations for each grade in each dimension.

	E must meet all criteria	S must meet all criteria	N	U
Behavior	Exhibits correct behavior in all cases, including edge, corner, and error cases.	Exhibits correct behavior in all common cases	Exhibits incorrect behavior in some common cases Lacks some required functionality	Behavior does not resemble specification Lacks significant portions of required functionality Submitted code does not compile
Structure & Design	All methods are non-trivial No redundancy exists between methods `main` method does not contain any inappropriate functionality	Each method performs a single, concrete task No obvious redundancy exists between methods All required methods present and meet requirements `main` method reflects overall structure of program	Some methods are trivial or perform multiple tasks Obvious redundancy exists between methods Some required methods missing or do not meet requirements `main` method does not reflect program structure	No or minimal methods exist
Use of Language Features	Most appropriate variant of all language features chosen in all circumstances Code within control flow constructs is properly factored All variables, constants, parameters, and return values have most the appropriate type All variables are declared in most local scope possible Constants used in all expected places Constants are not used in any inappropriate places	Control flow constructs used appropriately throughout program All variables, constants, parameters, and return values have reasonable types All variables are declared in local scope Constants not used in some expected places All required language features present and meet requirements	Inappropriate control flow constructs used Variables, parameters, or return values have inappropriate types Some required language features missing or do not meet requirements	Key language features not used Any global variables used Not enough code or features present to evaluate effectively Banned, advanced, or inappropriate language features used
Documentation & Readability	Header comments on all classes and methods are well-written and contain all relevant information All identifiers are descriptive and neither too long nor too short All code is indented and spaced consistently and cleanly Personal style choices are consistent and reasonable No lines longer than 100 characters	Meaningful header comments present on all classes and methods All identifiers are meaningful and follow prescribed naming conventions Code is indented and spaced appropriately Some lines longer than 100 characters	Header comments missing on some classes and/or methods Some identifier names are not meaningful or fail to follow prescribed conventions Indentation or spacing makes code difficult to read or follow	Code shows little or no effort follow code quality guidelines Code is extremely difficult to read and understand

Collaboration & Academic Misconduct

Philosophy

Learning is a collaborative process, and everyone benefits from working with others when learning new concepts and skills. In general, we encourage you to collaborate with your classmates in your learning and take advantage of each others' experience, understanding, and perspectives.

However, there is a difference between learning collaboratively and completing work for someone else. This can be a subtle but important distinction. Ultimately, the goal of the course is to ensure that every student masters the material and develops the skills to succeed in future courses, projects, and other related work. Submitting work that is not your own, or allowing another student to submit your work as their own, does not contribute toward developing mastery. In addition, this deprives you of the ability to receive feedback and support from the course staff in addressing the areas in which you are struggling.

For more information, consult the Allen School policy on academic misconduct.

Permitted & Prohibited Actions

The following is a partial list of collaborative actions that are encouraged and prohibited. This list is not intended to be exhaustive; there are many actions not included that may fall under either heading.

The following types of collaboration are encouraged:

Discussing the content of lessons, sections, labs, the textbook, or provided examples.
Working collaboratively on solutions to practice problems or checkpoints.
Posting and responding to questions on the course message board, including responding to questions from other students (without providing assessment code; see below).
Describing, either verbally or in text, your approach to a take-home assessment at a high-level and in such a way that the person receiving the description cannot reliably reproduce your exact work. Such description should be in English or another natural human language (i.e. not code).
Asking a member of the course staff about concepts with which you are struggling or bugs in your work.

The following types of collaboration are prohibited and may constitute academic misconduct:

Looking at another person's submission on a take-home assessment, or substantially similar code, at any point, in any form, for any reason, and for any amount of time. This restriction includes work written by classmates, family members or friends, former students, and online resources (such as GitHub or Chegg), among other sources.
Showing or providing your submission on a take-home assessment to another student at any time, in any format, for any reason.
Submitting work that contains code copied from another resource, even with edits or changes, except for resources explicitly provided by the course staff.
Having another person "walk you through" work you submit, or walking another person through work they submit, such that the work produced can be entirely and reliably reconstructed from the instructions provided. (That is, submitting work that you produced simply by following instructions on what to write.) This restriction includes classmates, former students, family members or friends, paid tutors or consultants, "homework support" services (such as Chegg), etc.

If you discuss a take-home assessment with one or more classmates, you must specify with whom you collaborated in the header comment in your submission. You may discuss with as many classmates as you like, but you must cite all of them in your work. Note that you may not collaborate in a way that is prohibited, even if you cite the collaboration.

Tip! A good rule of thumb to ensuring your collaboration is allowed is to not take written notes, photographs, or other records during your discussion and wait at least 30 minutes after completing the discussion before returning to your own work. (You could use this time to relax, watch TV, listen to a podcast, or do work for another class.) For most students, this will result in you only bringing the high-level concepts of the collaboration back to your work, and ensuring that you reconstruct the ideas on your own.

Instead of utilizing forbidden resources, we hope you will submit whatever work you have, even if it is not yet complete, so you can get feedback and revise your work later. If you are ever in doubt if a collaboration or resources is permitted or not, please contact a member of the course staff.

Penalties

Any submission found to be in violation of this policy will receive a grade of U, as we are unable to assess your mastery from work that is not your own. In addition, students will forfeit the ability to resubmit work that is found to be in violation. Repeated or egregious violations of the policy will be forwarded to a relevant university committee for further action.

Amnesty

The course staff has endeavored to create an environment in which all students feel empowered and encouraged to submit their own work, regardless of the quality, and avoid prohibited collaboration. However, despite our best efforts, students may occasionally exercise poor judgement and violate this policy. In many cases, these students come to regret this decision almost immediately. To that end, we offer the following opportunity for amnesty:

If you submit work that is in violation of the academic conduct policy, you may bring the action to Omar's attention within 72 hours of submission and request amnesty. If you do so, you will receive a grade of U for the initial submission, but you will be allowed to resubmit your work under the normal resubmission process. This action will not be shared outside of the course staff and will not be part of any academic record except in the case of repeated acts or abuses of the policy.

This policy is designed to allow students who have acted in a way they regret the opportunity to correct the situation and complete their work in a permitted way. It is not intended to provide forgiveness for violations that are detected by the course staff, nor to be invoked frequently. It is still in your best interest to submit whatever work you have completed so that you can receive feedback and support.

Note that, while requesting amnesty will allow you to resubmit your work, the resubmission must still not violate the collaboration policy. In particular, the resubmission must not include work that is not your own. It is extremely difficult to "unsee" or "forget" work that you may have viewed in violation of the policy, and it is your responsibility to ensure that your resubmission is completed entirely in accordance with the policy. (Needless to say, the easiest way to achieve this is to not violate the policy in the first place!)