18-642 Course Policies

Fall 2024 registration: do NOT sign up for a conflict with the class meeting time. You need to be available for the full meeting time of 6:00-8:50 PM.

Course Staff:

• Instructor: Prof. Philip Koopman
• TAs and Office hours: see Canvas.

• Computing: All students are required to have their own suitable desktop or laptop computing device and Internet connection to:
  • Log into campus compute servers to do project work.
  • Be able to make slides for homework (powerpoint or acrobat format)
  • OPTIONAL: be able to run a Linux Virtual Machine locally is very helpful for faster performance. However, it is not strictly required because you can use a campus server for this. Not all personal computers can run available tools. In particular, Apple products have been problematic some years due to poor virtual machine support for the M1 processor.

• E-mail: We have found that using e-mail, Piazza, and the like to handle substantive questions about course material with the course staff is both inefficient and in a surprising number of cases counter-productive to teaching goals. Therefore:
  • Only use e-mail for purely administrative topics
  • If you have a question, "doubt," or want an explanation, attend office hours or send an e-mail to schedule an office visit if need be. We'll be happy to spend the time to explain in person.
  • If you can't attend scheduled office hours, contact the TA for an alternate arrangement
    

No meetings will be recorded. You are expected to attend all class meetings synchronously. This includes live class meetings, small group meetings, and office hours. All primary lecture material and lab introduction lectures are pre-recorded and available to watch at your convenience.

Send all e-mail to: ece642-staff@lists.andrew.cmu.edu

Grading:

• The following categories of activities are used to determine course grades:
  • Video Lectures: (on-line auto-graded quiz)
    • Virtually all lectures are pre-recorded and watched at your convenience before the scheduled class meeting.
    • You must complete watching the video and answer associated quiz questions on Canvas to get credit (i.e., final quiz score is your score for that video).
    • Each per-video quiz score must be >65% to be considered "completed."
    • You can re-take the quiz a limited number of times before the deadline to improve your grade.
    • IMPORTANT: the point of the after-video quiz is to help you check whether you really paid attention to the video. Skimming the slides to cherry-pick answers is counter-productive to the learning objectives, and you're just cheating yourself out of the benefit for all these tuition dollars you are paying if you do that. If you don't know the answer, go back and review that section of the video. If you still aren't sure why an answer is correct, ask in class, recitation, or office hours. Taking short-cuts on the quiz can come back to be a serious problem for you in other aspects of the course. Leaving time for this is a good reason to do the quizzes on the weekend to get a jump on the week and have time to resolve doubts.
    • Quiz attempts are limited to mitigate brute force trial and error quiz taking abuse. If this causes a problem with not earning a passing grade on a quiz (i.e., not qualifying for a "completion") see the instructor at office hours for resolution. This typically involves an interactive interview with the instructor which must be completed within ONE WEEK of the quiz deadline. Using quiz assistance software too look up answers is an academic integrity violation. Using web searching or a chat service (including Large Language Models such as ChatGPT) for quiz assistance is an academic integrity violation. You should be referring solely to the slides and videos during the quiz. If you want to open up a second browser window and re-watch part of a video to be sure of your answer as you take the quiz, that is perfectly fine. There is no time limit on each quiz attempt.
    • Caution: Do not re-take the quiz after the hand-in deadline to avoid issues with late completion penalties unless you have FIRST consulted with the instructor.
  • Homework: (check-off)
    • Weekly homework hand-ins related to lecture topics.
    • Graded on a "check-off" system (i.e., satisfactory completion of minimum requirements and good faith effort)
  • Small Group Assignments & TA meetings: (check-off)
    • Weekly small group work assignments will be given to randomly assigned groups, with 3 +/- 1 students per group.
    • Students should START the group work during the scheduled TA meeting to ensure a smooth launch.
    • Students should complete this work during a real time collaborative session at their convienience, but before the deadline.
    • Graded on a "check-off" system (i.e., satisfactory completion of minimum requirements and good faith effort)
    • For small group work you'll need to coordinate with TA schedules to have a TA present at the start of the initial group meeting for that assignment. We'll use a sign-up system for this with a deadline.
      • If you do not sign up or contact course staff by the signup deadline you will NOT be checked off for the meeting.
      • If you do not attend the TA meeting you will NOT be checked off for the meeting. The meeting will proceed without you.
      • If you are more than 5 minutes late for the TA meeting you will NOT be checked off for the meeting. You should aim for 5 minutes early in case of technical problems joining the meeting.
  • Programming project assignments: (numerical grade according to a rubric)
    • Mostly weekly project hand-ins.
    • Up to 1 late project assignment penalty is dropped at the end of the semester. (You tell us which at the end of the semester.) Do not ask for additional "free lates" unless you have a truly exceptional situation (hospitalization -- yes; job interviews -- no).
    • A successful demo of the final project that passes acceptance tests is an important course grading criterion.
  • Weekly Status Reports: (check-off)
    • Every week we ask how many hours you spent that week and one or more brief feedback questions. You must complete all of them. They don't take long. Just set a calendar reminder and do these.
  • Live Lecture Attendance: (check-off)
    • We expect your FULL and UNDIVIDED attention during the entirety of the scheduled course live lecture meetings.
    • Every week we take attendance during the live session one or more times. You must be present for all attendance checks to recieve a check-off.
    • If you are not in attendance, you must (a) have an excused absence, and (b) attend instructor office hours either the week before or the week after for a one-on-one discussion if you want to receive a check-off. The instructor will allow at most one office hour interview per semester per student.
    • If you do not meet the check-off criteria, that week is recorded as a "miss"
    • Missing more than three weeks with neither excuse nor permitted make-up interview results in a failing grade for the course.

The below table sets grading policies. You must meet ALL criteria in a row to earn that grade (highest completely qualifying grade row prevails).

• (*) Two designated cumulative review homework assignments are given in lieu of exams (HW #20 and HW #40) are ineligible for "not completed." You shall complete those two homework assignments satisfactorily to earn a passing grade in the course.
• An assignment is completed when you earn at least a 65% score on that assignment before late penalty. (You might need to resubmit with a late penalty to meet this threshold, and that late penalty will apply to other aspects of grading.) This includes both lectures and projects: below 65% score means not completed. For check-off grades, it is completed if you are checked off as meeting minimum requirements. If you fall below 65% on quiz attempts for a lecture and run out of attempts come to instructor office hours to discuss the situation so as to not miss a letter grade due to failing to complete that quiz. (This should be an unusual occurence, but it might happen rarely despite good faith efforts.)
• If you arrive in class so late you miss attendance, leave class early, or you forget to respond to attendance check, you still need both an excused absence and an instructor meeting during scheduled office hours before the next class to avoid a "miss." This offer is valid only ONCE per semester per student.
• "Late" is with respect to the Canvas submission time, and is automatically enforced. Even one second late is "late." Don't wait until the last minute. We STRONGLY recommend you set your personal deadline for ONE HOUR before the Canvas deadline. No whining if Canvas crashes, your internet goes out, or you lose power less than an hour before the deadline.You've been warned. (Even a minute late can cause huge issues in real life too: example)
  • Due to the course add deadline, the first two weeks have all late penalties suspended until after the course Add deadline in addition to the above limits. You are expected to work with course staff to catch up in a timely manner if you add late (usually by the end of week 3). All assignments must be completed, even by students who add after the first day of class.
  • The Canvas deadlines are normally the morning *after* the deadline announced on the course web page. So Friday night means the Canvas deadline is set at Saturday morning, typically at 8 AM US ET. We recommend you go by the course web page deadline for scheduling purposes and not cut it close.
  • The late penalty for projects is 10% per day or fraction of day late. (e.g., up to 24 hours late is 10%; 24-48 hours late is 20%). The maximum late penalty imposed is 50%, so if you hand in something on the last day of class your grade is multiplied by 0.5 to incorporate the late penalty. Other assignments do not have a late penalty percentage, but most assignment categories have a maximum permitted number of late assignments for a given course grade.
• Averages are per category. For example, a high lecture quiz score does not offset a low project score.
• Each submission is normalized to a scale of 100%, and averages are taken of normalized grades in that category. This means that the number of points in any one assignment does not affect its weighting in the average. (Point counts are for ease in grading that particular assignment. A 200 point project counts the same as a 50 point project toward the course average. A 6 point lecture quiz counts as one quiz, the same as a 3 point lecture quiz.)
• DO NOT refer to Canvas grading category computations. We are unable to modify them to conform to our grading criteria, and we are unable to turn them off. Ignore all automatically computed grade average information in Canvas.
• "Maximum Late" means no more than this number of assignments can be submitted late, regardless of score.
• "Not completed" allocations can be used against "late" score thresholds. This means that, for example, if you have done all the homeworks but 4 are late, you're still OK for a B course grade in that category (3 count as late; one counts as "not completed.")
• Late penalties can only be waived or maximum number of late assignments exceeded only with a substantive excuse (e.g., hospitalization) validated in writing by your academic program staff advisor or other university authority. We do not expect to waive other requirements beyond providing an "incomplete" grade option to provide more time when special circumstances warrant this. An "Incomplete" grade is only assigned due to a major life disruption event such as extended hospitalization that derails a student's semester, and normally requires an expectation that course requirements will be completed the following semester. Note that TA support is not available the following semester, so there will be significant pressure to complete the project on time even if other aspects of the course are not completed.
  • For Fall 2024 we do not expect to assign any "incomplete" grades to any student because this is the last semester the course will be taught, and the last semester the instructor will have teaching duties at the university.
• There are no traditional exams in this course beyond the per-lecture quiz and cumulative homeworks already discussed.

Assignment Expectations:

• An explicit teaching objective for this course is to have students get experience with a comparatively complex set of inter-related activities and work products. It is common in industry to be working on multiple tasks on firm deadlines while having to self-manage dependencies and time commitments. The design of this course gives you practice in that environment with low stakes (if you miss a deadline you lose a few points rather than getting fired).
• Homework questions usually will have a slide format required. Some homeworks will require a brief in-class presentation (either live or recorded), usually lasting 1 or 2 minutes. Pay attention to the format requirements and especially font sizes because we will be screen-sharing some hand-ins, and the Canvas grading system makes it too difficult to view non-conforming formats. Hand-ins that do not meet format requirements disrupt the running of the live class meeting and make grading impractical at scale.
• Re-grade requests must be made live at TA office hours. The TA might request an e-mail documenting the request as follow-up.
• Network problems, computer problems, and so on are a normal and expected fact of life. Students should avoid doing their assignments at the last minute. We already have "free late" policies in place to handle the normal emergencies that occur in life, and the hand-in deadline enforced is the morning after the deadline (the next morning -- but in all cases is the Canvas hand-in deadline).
• Documenting excuses that are a usual part of student life do not give you additional free late penalties. These include minor illness (cold without dramatic fever), equipment failures, travel, job interviews, and heavy loads imposed by other courses. Make sure you schedule your time, and spend your "free lates" wisely!
  • In particular, job interviews are not an acceptable excuse for more than the allotted miss of live class meetings.
  • If you need to fly to an interview, fly early or late to avoid missing the class meeting, or plan a long layover to attend the course at your connecting airport; make sure your data plan is loaded up for that.
  • If another professor springs a last minute heavy assignment on you, your problem is with that professor, not with us. Our policies are already generous, but firm -- don't push for more. Ask the other professor for flexibility since you have a previous commitment to this course.
  • If another professor schedules a mandatory conflicting event with our class meeting time, TELL US. They are not allowed to do that and are REQUIRED to make an alternate time available to you by university policy. We will contact them to resolve, and in the past have done this without the other instructor being upset (because it is university policy). But we can't do that if you don't tell us before the last minute.
• If you'd like assignments made available early in anticipation of a heavy week we are happy to work with you to do that. In almost every case working ahead is useful and encouraged. If unsure just ask. We will go to extreme lengths to avoid you having to redo something if you got ahead on course work and we have to make a change for some reason.

No Recording Policy:

• There is a strict NO RECORDING policy for all class-related activities unless explicitly permitted in writing by the instructor. (Such permission is almost certainly not going to be granted.) This includes all types of video/audio recordings, photographs, retention of captions, retention of transcripts, screen capture, screen photographs, retention of chat logs, live tweets, etc. This includes all class interactions, such as class meetings, recitations, Q&A sessions, office hours, etc. This is a 100% absolute policy. (Pre-recorded material might be shown in class; this policy refers to recording of the class meeting itself and other meetings.) Violating this policy is considered a severe academic integrity violation and will be handled accordingly, with automatic failure in the course for a first offense, no second chances, and an expected recommendation for expulsion from the university sent to a higher-level review process.
  • Note that this especially applies to our guest speakers. If we record, some of them would not be allowed to speak at all, and all of them are likely to hold back when answering questions.
  • It is important that this also applies to no recording of materials (including screen captures) from peer review sessions as well.
  • This is also a strict prohibition on using transcript services such as "AI" meeting assistants that watch or listen to activities, even if the intended purpose is for taking personal notes.

Academic Integrity:

• This course has a zero-tolerance policy for cheating and academic integrity violations.
  A first offense will result in failing the course. No kidding; no exceptions. No second chances.
  We've found that less strict policies simply encourage students prone to cut corners to do so until they are caught -- with an expectation of a second chance -- wasting course staff time on policing, and degrading the learning experience for everyone.
• Assignments (homework & programming assignments) are expected to be the student's own work. However:
  • Students may talk to other students about general background information and to understand course material. Students may do research on the Web to find information relevant to the course, and in many cases homework assignments require such research. These discussions must not cross the line at which the actual handed in material is plagiarized or derived from other students, uncredited sources, or is not primarily the work of the student themself per university integrity standards.
  • Students may use published material (including Web material and Large Language Model (LLM)/"chatbot" material) as a starting point for assignments so long as ALL of the following criteria are met:
    1. They make substantive changes or additions to the starting point, with those changes demonstrating mastery of the assignment topic rather than being mere cosmetic changes. For example, merely changing variable names or rearranging the topology of a graphic are not substantive changes.
    2. They use sources that are not created in response to the assignment made by this course (e.g., sources are not previous answers for this course and were not created in response to "does anyone have an answer to this homework problem" style postings; no portion of the assignment text can be used as the prompt for an LLM)
    3. They provide a specific citation to the source that can be checked by course staff (e.g., a URL or book author/title/date; disclosure of how an LLM was used along with the prompts that produced material incorporated into the assignment).
    4. For questions that ask for a summary of a topic and similar questions, the student must summarize in their own words, and not use quotations from the sources consulted. However, the sources consulted must be cited. Wikipedia, LLMs, and similar non-authoritative sources are not acceptable citations when asked to research or summarize a concept unless specifically authorized by the homework question. However, Wikipedia can be used informally to initially explore the concept so long as the final summary is based on authoritative source material. (Wikipedia often has references that can be helpful, but you need to track down the source, not just rely upon the Wikipedia summary of what a resource says, which can be incorrect. LLMs spew too much misinformation to be trusted for most topics in this course.)
• Students shall not use written (including computer-readable data) or orally conveyed materials from other students and other sources specifically rsponsive to the assignments in the class, even as starting points for their assignments. This includes the following (and any other relevant scenarios):
  • Do NOT use previous year solutions, even if only as a "starting point," or you are trying to just get ideas, etc.
  • Do NOT use another current-year student solution, even if only as a "starting point," or you are trying to just get ideas, or it is just code comments, etc. (There is no distinction between comments and code in terms of academic integrity issues -- all content of an assignment is relevant to academic integrity issues regardless of whether points are assigned or not.) Do not even look at another student's screen before you hand in an assignment (in peer reviews it is OK to look at material BOTH students have already handed in -- however, students should not base any specific aspect of their design or implementation on such shared material, even if only as a "starting point"). If a reasonable observer would concluded that your results look like you copied, then we will conclude that you copied.
  • Do NOT use on-line solution repository information, even if only as a "starting point," or you are trying to just get ideas, etc. (this constitutes material created for this or a similar course as opposed to generally available material). This specifically includes Course Hero, Chegg, and other on-line assistance services/sites.
  • Do NOT use code generated by "AI" type systems such as Large Language Models (LLMs), automated code authoring/assistance systems, or any other automated code generation technique beyond spell checkers. Write the code yourself.
  • Do NOT accept step-by-step instructions from another student (even if verbally, even if only as a "starting point," etc.) that are likely to result in a similar solution to that other student's solution. If two solutions have unmistakeable similarities that are not a necessary part of all correct answers to the question, and that are not directly attributable to having used the same source material, that will be considered presumptive evidence of cheating whether or not you attempted to evade the use of a written starting point from another student or other rules.
  • Do NOT sit next to another student and talk each other through solving problems as you go, nor communally ask a TA for detailed guidance as you work on solving a problem. This can lead to nearly identical solutions to open-ended problems. It can be impossible for course staff to distinguish this from copying, so this advice is for your protection.
  • Do NOT upload your code or project work products to a shared file system (e.g., do NOT upload to google docs) for review to avoid other students downloading it and using it as a starting point with or without your permission. Use screen sharing for reviews, not sharing of actual documents. (Note that generally reviews are only scheduled after a hand-in deadline so as to reduce the opportunity for incidents connected with data sharing for reviews.)
  • Do NOT share materials not already handed in during group peer reviews. For example, showing your implementation (source code) that is not yet handed in during a peer review on sequence diagrams puts you at risk of that source code being copied, but does not give you a way to prove you are the victim instead of using peer reviews as an excuse to improperly share code.
  • Be very careful about study group dynamics. In recent years, over-reliance on study group discussion of projects that drifted into discussing specific solution techniques has led to multiple instances of academic integrity violation with all involved students failing the course. Study groups should only discuss assignments AFTER everyone in the group has handed in the relevant assignment. This includes peer review groups dicussing anything other than work products that have already been handed in. If you show or describe something not already handed in by both students to another student and they copy it, that is just as much your fault as it is theirs, regardless of the context.
  • Do NOT take the lecture quiz as part of a study group activity -- every quiz must be taken individually with no help/hints on question answers from others. Group study and discussion before any student in the group has viewed the quiz is OK. If you are stuck on a quiz question ask a TA or the instructor at office hours. (We suggest you take quizzes the first time early so you have time to visit office hours before the quiz deadline.)
  • It is OK to look on the web (or, if you must, ask an LLM, but if it lies to you that is your problem and not ours) for routine support mechanics such as examples on how to set up shell scripts that are not specific to the the course assignments. Examples of OK topics are how to create or modify a make file, how specific script commands work in general, generic examples ("how do I write a bash script to tar and zip a directory), look for tutorials on ROS, look for tutorials on unit testing, find generic maze solving algorithms not specific to the course assignment, and so on. While not the only possible way to cross the line, once you are cutting and pasting words from a project assignment into a query or prompt box, you have definitely crossed the line into an academic integrity violation.
• Uploading course materials including student solutions (homework hand-ins, project hand-ins, etc.) to services such as Chegg is strictly forbiden and constitutes an academic integrity violation:
  • Instructor provided materials are copyright by the instructor and not student-owned intellectual property that can be shared. If you want to share something provide a URL to the public-facing course web material.
  • Student created materials, if shared with anyone, can reasonably be expected to be seen by other students in this course.
    • If you generate general code as part of your projects that you wish to share that is generally applicable beyond this course, you are required to receive instructor permission for clearance first. Permission will not normally be granted for public-facing disclosure, but might make sense for interview situations or other specific circumstances.
  • CMU policy permits enforcement of academic integrity violations that occur after the course has ended.
• Group assignments should be the collaborative effort of members assigned to the group and ONLY the members of the assigned group. They should otherwise follow the "student own work" policies stated above, except "student" changes to "assigned group."
• Lecture quizzes are expected to be entirely the own student's work:
  • Taking the quiz signifies that you have watched the lecture video in its entirety (not simply skimmed through the slides). Watching at up to 2x speed is permitted for students with strong listening skills.
  • The quiz shall be completed solely on your own, and is intended to measure that you actually watched the lecture video, with answers being mostly factual recall from the lecture contents.
  • Any help from a friend, colleague, written notes created by anyone other than you, group quiz-taking efforts, etc. constitutes impermissible cheating, Each lecture quiz should be considered and completed as an in-class examination with accompanying rules on conduct.
  • It is permissible to refer back to the lecture video and slides when answering quiz questions (so quizzes are "open textbook" in that sense), but not other sources (not "open internet" and certainly not "open LLM").
  • It is NOT permissible to use any software aid, helper, app, program, etc. in support of quiz taking beyond the built-in Canvas quiz functionality. For example, it is NOT permissible to use a browser plug-in that automatically populates answers from your previous quiz attempt or someone else's quiz attempts. You must complete quizzes entirely on your own, using normal computer controls (mouse, keyboard, assistive technology required for a formally approved disability accommodation) to compete the quizzes with no answer management assistance or the like. Due to abuse in previous semesters, violation of this policy is specifically an academic integrity violation.
  • It is NOT permissible to share quiz content or information with other students, including without limitation, the quiz questions, screen snapshots, and quiz answers.
  • It should be possible for every student to achieve a high score on every quiz. In previous years the vast majority of students met the quiz grading requirement for an "A" letter grade in the course. If you are having trouble completing quizzes with high scores we suggest you come to instructor office hours and discuss the situation for assistance. Usually low quiz scores indicates you are not spending enough time and attention on the lecture material.
• In some cases, using material that is the result of a group assignment or student homework might be explicitly designated as acceptable. This includes, but is not limited to using comments (but not cut & paste solutions) from peer review meetings to improve your project, or building on previous group work when the assignment specifically instructs you to do so. If we don't explictly say in writing that sharing is permitted, it is not permitted. If in doubt, ask.
• Do NOT give your source code or other finished work products to other students in the class. During peer review you should project or otherwise show your code on a shared screen as you review, but you shall not actually transfer code or other project files to another student's machine. Also, you should not permit photographs of your screen showing code and should not permit recording of the review session. This is for your own protection so another student can't copy your code without your knowledge. NEVER show any part of your project in a design review that you have not already handed in and NEVER e-mail or otherwise transfer files to another student; just show them on a screen instead.
• We check project assignments with MOSS and other methods at the end of the semester. If you are copying code, designs, or tests that will most likely catch up with you. If your friends seem to be getting away with something, it just means we have not done the analysis yet.
• Use of large language model (LLM) tools is considered to be the same as using a web search for academic integrity purposes.
  • Example: if ChatGPT (or whatever) creates a design artifact or code for a project using wording from the project assignment, it is the same as if you had cut-and-pasted it from Stack Overflow or other discussion site in response to a "how do I do this project assignment" question. Since typical LLM use is to ask for a specific answer to a specific question, you should consider this to be an academic integrity violation the same as asking someone else that specific question and they do your assignment for you -- even if just used as a starting point.
  • Rationale: We are teaching basic code writing skills. Using an LLM is like using a calculator when you have not yet learned addition, and we're trying to teach you addition. You might get the right answer, but the right answer was not itself the primary goal of the learning exercise. Rather, the process of making your own mistakes (not the LLM's mistakes) and getting to the right answer is the goal. If we let you use an LLM we'd have to make the assignments significantly more complex, and it is unlikely you'd actually learn what we are trying to teach with such an assignment. Use some other opportunity to teach yourself LLM prompting skills, not this course.
  • Most code used to train LLMs that we've seen strays from the usual tech interview questions is pretty bad quality. As an experiment we fed some of our assignments into ChatGPT to see what would happen. It got truly ugly in a hurry. You're honestly worse off if you try to do that for most software that strays much from what one used to do by copy-and-paste-from-stack-overflow. Don't waste your time on that game.
• If in doubt about whether you are following this course's policy or the CMU academic integrity policy properly or have questions, ask the course staff/instructor. If in doubt about being in doubt, ask us. Plagiarism (including uncited or prohibited sources that for example are detected by plagiarism detection tools and confirmed as plagiarism by the instructor) or other academic integrity violations according to the university policy will result in a failing "R" grade for both the giver and the receiver of plagiarized material or prohibited collaboration.

Special circumstances and student wellness:

• If we're doing something in the course that is causing you problems or just rubbing you the wrong way, please let us know. You can send us anonymous e-mail if you prefer. While we can't make everyone happy all of the time, we take all comments and suggestions seriously. In the past, we've altered course policies many times in response to student suggestions on how to improve things.
• None of the course policies are intended to impair the ability of a student to successfully complete the course if attempting to do so in good faith. If you encounter a situation in which you need special accommodation please contact the course staff to see what can be worked out given available resources. The university requires some types of accommodations to be arranged via an official university process.
• If you have other special needs such as observance of a religious holiday or an unavoidable conflict with a test date in another class, please discuss this with the instructor during the first week of class. Per official university policy, we consider this class to have priority in its scheduled class meeting times if another instructor schedules a conflicting event (e.g., an evening test for some other course during our lecture time -- this has happened several times). However, please let us know if this happens so we can advise you and potentially contact the other instructor to inform them of the issue for resolution (without mentioning your name). Don't suffer silently!
• If you have an accommodations letter from the Disability Resources office you must present that to the course instructor the first week of class or within one week of the initial identification of the need for accommodation so that appropriate arrangements can be made. Ability to provide requested accomodations is limited in some cases by available resources. In particular recording of class meetings is not supported under any circumstance due to its significant chilling effect on most of our speakers.
• Take care of yourself. Do your best to maintain a healthy lifestyle this semester by eating well, exercising, avoiding drugs and alcohol, getting enough sleep and taking some time to relax. This will help you achieve your goals and cope with stress.
  • If you are falling behind in the course or feel overwhelmed or just have questions about to best handle your workload, come to the instructor office hours (or schedule an appointment at another time). You might be surprised at the help we can offer if you're trying in good faith to do the course but are struggling. Every semester some students need special help and we provide it.
  • All of us benefit from support during times of struggle. There are many helpful resources available on campus and an important part of the college experience is learning how to ask for help. Asking for support sooner rather than later is a good idea.
  • If you or anyone you know experiences any academic stress, difficult life events, or feelings like anxiety or depression, we strongly encourage you to seek support. Counseling and Psychological Services (CaPS) is here to help: call 412-268-2922 and visit their website at http://www.cmu.edu/counseling/. Consider reaching out to a friend, faculty or family member you trust for help getting connected to the support that can help.
• We have built in additional forgiveness for late assignments and a missed class to account for the probability that many students in the class will have a moderate severity illness during the course of the semester, such as COVID19. If you are sick but feel like you can attend class (given that it is on-line only) it is OK to keep video off if you alert the instructor to the situation. If you have illness more severe than that please contact the instructor to discuss your circumstances.

Use of student-written code and other work products:

The goal of this policy is to give us concrete, representative examples to talk about, and to minimize the temptation for students to copy code instead of learning via the process of developing their own software.

During the course of the semester we plan to use student-submitted code and other submitted material for homeworks and/or projects in a variety of ways. This may include:

• Showing a piece of code or a homework assignment during lecture, discussion, or recitation as a specific example of good (or bad) practice.
• Using a piece of student-submitted code as part of a homework or project assignment in this semester or a future semester.
• Modifying a piece of student-submitted code for use.
• Other uses of student-submitted code in support of educational goals both within the university and any subsequent use of the course material beyond the university.

In general we will NOT give public (outside the scope of class meetings) credit to the student who originated the code or homework answer on the assumption that they would rather not be identified, since most uses of such code will be to point out opportunities for improvement. We will make our best effort to scrub identification of the code author before releasing code. If you would like to be given credit for a particular piece of code let us know and we'll be happy to do that.

We note that much of the code you'll be writing is based on code we've provided to you as a starting point to begin with. You are welcome to use the course code and your improvements in non-public projects. However, we request that you do not make the code public so as to avoid tempting future-year students to plagiarize your assignments. (Being so tempted is not a valid excuse to cheat.) We will be keeping records, and we will be checking student submissions for plagiarism across multiple academic years. In past years this has caught out students who were intentionally committing academic integrity violations and were given penalties in accordance the the course policy.

By participating in this course you grant us a non-revocable license to use any code you write, homework you submit, and group assignments you complete for the course in ways consistent with this policy. If you object to this policy or have other concerns please let the course staff know the first week of class, and in any event before you submit an assignment for grading. If a special circumstance arises please contact the course staff immediately for resolution.

Some homeworks may require submitting a brief recorded video made by the student (for example, summarizing a topical event such as a safety or security incident). By submitting such a video, students grant the course staff and the university non-exclusive permission to host and display the video for within-university-community purposes. For example, videos may be made available via Canvas for use by course participants. For large class sizes watching some student videos might be assigned as a homework rather than in-class activity. Videos will not be made available publicly beyond this scope without express student written consent.

University DEI Statement: (Updated August 2020)

Every individual must be treated with respect. The ways we are diverse are many and are critical to excellence and an inclusive community. They include but are not limited to: race, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, creed, ancestry, belief, veteran status, or genetic information. We at CMU, will work to promote diversity, equity and inclusion because it is just and necessary for innovation. Therefore, while we are imperfect, we will work inside and outside of our classrooms, to increase our commitment to build and sustain a community that embraces these values.

It is the responsibility of each of us to create a safer and more inclusive environment. Bias incidents, whether intentional or unintentional in their occurrence, contribute to creating an unwelcoming environment for individuals and groups at the university. If you experience or observe unfair or hostile treatment on the basis of identity, we encourage you to speak out for justice and support in the moment and and/or share your experience anonymously using the following resources:
Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion: csdi@andrew.cmu.edu, (412) 268-2150, www.cmu.edu/student-diversity
Report-It online anonymous reporting platform: www.reportit.net username: tartans password: plaid
All reports will be acknowledged, documented and a determination will be made regarding a course of action." All experiences shared will be used to transform the campus climate.

Other policies:

• See Course FAQ for information on course description and frequently asked questions
• See Main Course Page for course schedule and other information
• No additional resources are required for this course beyond tools and materials provided via the web site and CMU computing facilities with one exception: you need access to your own computer with webcam to attend class meetings and complete at least some assignments.
• If your activity interrupts the ability of the instructor to speak, impairs the ability of other students to pay attention, or is otherwise distracting, then it is prohibited in the classroom.
  • Remote meetings:
    • We require you to leave your camera on with your full face in-frame to promote a better sense of participation and provide instructor feedback during discussions. If you have special circumstances check with the instructor.
    • Please mute your microphone when you are not talking
    • Please use safe-for-work backgrounds, with background not interfering with ability to see your face (e.g., no background with a photo of faces is permitted).
    • Please do not share zoom meeting information with anyone not enrolled in the class.
    • Do not hold side conversations or multi-task during class meetings. We expect your full and undivided attention during class meetings. If you engage in side conversations expect that to be recorded as an absence since you are not actually paying attention to class.
• Students are NOT permitted to record, stream, video conference, or otherwise capture the classroom video, audio, transcription, even for personal use. This applies to office hours and other meetings as well.
• The course materials are copyright by the instructor and are not to be posted on-line or redistributed in any manner without express written permission of the instructor. This includes materials the instructor chooses to post publicly himself. Any exceptions require express written instructor permission and will normally not be granted.

Updated 6/10/2024

Updates since start of semester:

• None