Course Policies

General

Each student is expected to do his/her own work. For a first offense, a student caught collaborating / cheating in any way will receive a zero for the exam / homework / project in question. In the event of a second offense, the student will receive an F for the course and may be subject to stronger action. Note: Submissions that are alike in a substantive way (not due to coincidence) will be considered to be cheating by ALL involved parties. Please protect yourselves by only storing your files in private directories, and by retrieving all printouts promptly.

Students are encouraged to attend all lectures, which frequently include material that is not directly taken from the text. If a student misses a lecture, he/she is still responsible for the material covered and is advised to copy the notes from a classmate.

An abundance of information, including announcements, handouts, review sheets and solutions will be posted on my web page (and possibly TA pages as well) throughout the term. Students are expected to be aware of all information that is posted on our web pages, and should access them frequently.

All graded materials that a student receives back should be saved in a safe place until after the term has ended and he/she has received and accepts his/her final grade. In this way, any grade discrepancies can be easily resolved.

If you have a disability for which you are or may be requesting an accommodation, you are encouraged to contact both your instructor and DRS [140 WPU, (412) 648-7890] as early as possible in the term. DRS will verify your disability and determine reasonable accommodations.

Exams

The dates for the exams are listed in the Important Dates webpage

Students are expected to be present for all exams. Make-up exams will only be given in the event of an emergency, and only if I am informed in advance. If you cannot contact me directly, send me email or call the CS Department (624-8490) and leave me a message. Failure to notify me prior to missing an exam will result in a zero for the exam.

Assignments

There will be multiple assignments throughout the term. All of them to must be written in Java,

Students are expected to hand in all of the assignments. Failure to hand in two assignments will result in a final grade no higher than a ‘C’. Failure to hand in three or more assignments will result in a final grade no higher than a ‘D’

Assignments will be submitted electronically to a submission site set up for the course. More details on submission guidelines will be provided on the course web site.

On-time assignments must be received at the submission site by 11:59 pm on the due date. Any assignment received after this time will be considered to be LATE.

Late assignments must be received at the submission site by 11:59 pm on the late due date. Late assignments will be penalized 15 points (out of 100). Assignments submitted after the late due date will not be graded and will receive a score of 0.

Students are expected to have a backup disk (or storage somewhere) for every assignment they turn in. In this way, if there is any problem with the original copy during program development, the backup can be used and the assignment can be resumed without data loss.

More details on the programs and submission guidelines will be given with the first assignment.

Quizzes

Quizzes will be given during almost every class. Two questions in any given quiz: one related to the topic discussed in the previous lecture and the other related to the topic to be discussed in the current lecture (all topics for this course have been video recorded and it is your responsibility to watch them).

As with exams, quizzes can only be made up if you contact the lab instructor in advance. If you miss a quiz without informing the lab instructor, you will receive a zero for that quiz.

Labs

Labs will typically be done during the specified laboratory sessions. Many will be placed online prior to the indicated lab date.

All labs will be graded, typically via short in-lab demonstrations for the TA