Course Policies

Makeups for exams

Disabled Students Program (DSP)

UCSB provides academic accommodations to students with disabilities. Students with disabilities are responsible for ensuring that the Disabled Students Program (DSP) is aware of their disabilities and for providing DSP with appropriate documentation. DSP is located at 2120 Student Resource Building and serves as the campus liaison regarding issues and regulations related to students with disabilities. The DSP staff works in an advisory capacity with a variety of campus departments to ensure that equal access is provided to all disabled students. If you have a disability that requires accommodation in this class, please go see the DSP very early on in the quarter. I will only honor these types of requests for accommodation via the DSP. More information about the DSP is found here: http://dsp.sa.ucsb.edu

UCSB Policy on Academic Honesty

It is expected that students attending the University of California understand and subscribe to the ideal of academic integrity, and are willing to bear individual responsibility for their work. Any work (written or otherwise) submitted to fulfill an academic requirement must represent a student’s original work. Any act of academic dishonesty, such as cheating or plagiarism, will subject a person to University disciplinary action. Using or attempting to use materials, information, study aids, or commercial “research” services not authorized by the instructor of the course constitutes cheating. Representing the words, ideas, or concepts of another person without appropriate attribution is plagiarism. Whenever another person’s written work is utilized, whether it be a single phrase or longer, quotation marks must be used and sources cited. Paraphrasing another’s work, i.e., borrowing the ideas or concepts and putting them into one’s “own” words, must also be acknowledged. Although a person’s state of mind and intention will be considered in determining the University response to an act of academic dishonesty, this in no way lessens the responsibility of the student.

(Section A.2 from: http://www.sa.ucsb.edu/Regulations/student_conduct.aspx, Student Conduct, General Standards of Conduct)

Each student is responsible for knowing and abiding by UCSB’s policies on Academic Honesty. Any student violating these policies will earn an ‘F’ in the course and will be reported to the Academic Integrity Office . Committing acts that violate Student Conduct policies that result in course disruption are cause for suspension or dismissal from UCSB.

About Collaboration

As mentioned above, one of the things we really want to convey in this course is that real-world software development is very seldom an ‘individual sport’—it is much more often a ‘team sport’. Companies want to hire CS and CE graduates that know how to collaborate with others on producing software.

In the CS Department at UCSB, we understand the value of this. However, it puts us in a tricky position.

On the one hand, we want to encourage working together in ways that help you develop your skills and teamwork, and help you understand that programming can be a social, collaborative, creative activity—not something done only by loner nerds in cubicles. The sooner you start with activities such as pair programming, code reviews, and other collaborative software development activities, the more skill you’ll develop, and the sooner you’ll be ready for the real world. Plus, for many people, working together with others is a lot more enjoyable and fun than being a loner.

On the other hand, we need to avoid any situations where freeloaders are "coasting" through courses by leaning too much on others—never developing independent skills as programmers. This situation creates huge problems. Mostly it is damaging to the freeloaders themselves, who eventually crash and burn, perhaps far too late to choose another career path without significant difficulty. However, it also creates problems for everyone else—some hardworking students become demoralized by the unfairness of it all, and the value of a UCSB education is diminished by the freeloaders’ lack of accomplishment.

Thus, we must strike a balance.

Our emphasis on collaboration means:

However:

The bottom line:

A final note: the emphasis on collaboration in this course does not necessarily extend to other CS courses you may take in the future.

Other important policies

You may NOT:

Exceptions

If you miss a class, you miss the opportunity for the points on that in-class assignment, or homework that was due. Period.

There is no makeup, except for:

To make up an assignment from a "sick-day/personal-day", you must within one week of the absence, or 24 hours before the final exam, which ever is earlier, come to office hours (this cannot be done in lab). You may only do this ONCE per quarter.

In rare cases, if there is a documented family emergency, documented extended illness, documented required court appearance, or other situation beyond the students’ control (with documentation) the instructor may grant additional make up days entirely at the instructor’s discretion—but this is not a guarantee or a right.

About pair programming

Most of the programming work in this course can be done using a style of programming known as "pair programming". This is where two people (in rare cases, three) work together at the same terminal to solve a programming problem.

It is similar, in some ways, to having a "lab partner" in a Biology, Chemistry or Physics course.

For the assignments where pair programming is used, it is required, not optional. Here’s why:

To learn more about pair programming, watch the following video (it takes less than 10 minutes):

http://bit.ly/pair-programming-video

Disclaimer

The course policies have been provided as accurately as possible, but are subject to change at the instructor’s discretion, within the bounds of UC policy.

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