Course Policies

Assignments

Each week has a corresponding assignment. Assignments are due the following week by noon Tuesday. This ensures that instructors have sufficient time to review and collate assignments as needed prior to class on Tuesday evening.

Assignment submissions may involve (1) published updates to your GitLab repo, (2) submission of content on Gradescope, and/or (3) submission of external forms (e.g., for peer review).

Late submissions should be avoided, so as not to fall behind as new assignments are issued. However, sometimes life intervenes. If you are unable to submit an assignment on time, let the instructors know (for example, via private message on Ed) and share your intended completion plan. In some cases failure to submit on time may unavoidably result in assignments not being included for in-class sharing or peer review.

You have (2) total late days you can apply as needed to turn in an individual assignment without penalty after the due date. We can grant additional late days should a situation warrant (such as illness, etc.).

Class Participation

It is important to attend the lectures (or if you are unable, to watch the recordings) and read the readings. Each lecture will assume that you have read and are ready to discuss the day’s readings and engage in the in-class activities.

Each class section includes in-class activities to help develop your visualization design and implementation skills. Completing these activities is a key part of your participation grade. That said, we do not expect you to work on the exercises outside of class time, and exercises will be greaded in terms of best effort rather than full completion. If you are unable to attend a class section, you are still expected to attempt the exercises remotely / asynchronously, with the same total time expectation as if you had attended in-person.

Q&A

Questions should be posted on the course discussion site (Ed). In general, we encourage public posts so that other students can benefit from the responses. If you have a private question or concern, we recommend using a private message on Ed or emailing the instructors.

Plagiarism

Assignments should consist primarily of original work. Building off of others’ work—including 3rd party libraries, public source code examples, and design ideas—is acceptable and in most cases encouraged. However, you are expected to credit and cite such sources, for example as part of assignment write-ups. Failure to do so may lead to point deductions.

Use of generative AI technologies to aid development is acceptable, but requires a comprehensive use acknowledgement describing how the technology was used, including (but not limited to) any authored prompts, alongside clear indications of what code and/or ideas were ultimately incorporated into your work. You are expected to apply your own design reasoning; outsourcing this work can lead to point deductions.

Religious Accommodation

Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available here: Religious Accommodations Policy. Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form.