Policies


Grading


40%Lab assignments (~10)
30%Final exam
25%Tests
5%Class Participation and Attendance

Academic Integrity


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.

Tests


Tests will be given at the beginning of lab on the days posted in the schedule. Please arrive at class promptly to ensure that you don't lose time on the test. If you are unable to attend class for a test, contact your lab instructor as soon as possible to make accomodations.

There will be three or four tests throughout the semester. The first exam will be worth 50% of the other tests. We want the first test to be a low-stakes, gentler exam to not give an extra advantage to students who already know C++ or an unfair penalty to students who do not. You're not expected to know C++ at the beginning of CS35!

Class Participation


Your participation grade consists of:
  • Required attendance to lecture and lab
  • Active participation in lecture
  • Active engagement in the class discussion group (Piazza)
  • Regular attendance in office hours

Lab Assignment Policy


Lab assignments are submitted electronically using git, and are 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 C++ and the course material. Later, we will transition to partnered lab assignments to allow you to work on larger projects and to gain important experience working in groups to build software.

Late Policy


Lab assignments will typically be assigned Thursdays before lab and will be due Wednesday at 11:59PM. You are strongly encouraged to start 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 assignment 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. When you use late time, you should still expect to work on the newly-released lab during the following lab section meeting. The professor and ninjas will always 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, 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.

Final Exam


The format of the final exam is very much like the test, but longer. By the time you take the final, you’ll have prepared for these questions by taking the tests throughout semester. As long as you’re comfortable with those questions, you should have very little to worry about.

The final exam has not yet been posted. Check the schedule for when it will be announced.