CS 074 The Digital World
Spring 2008
Computer Science Department
The College of Arts and Sciences
Boston College

About Syllabus Textbooks Grading
Staff Problem Sets Projects WebCT
Resources News Stand Python

Grading

Student grades will be computed along the following lines:
  1. Problem Sets : roughly 35%. NB: We do not accept late submissions. However, students may request the ommision of one problem set from the calculation of their problem set total.

  2. Project : roughly 15%;

  3. Midterm Exam : roughly 20%;

  4. Final Exam : roughly 20%;

  5. Classroom participation : roughly 10%.

Class Attendance

Attendance at all classes is required. While it has not been my usual practice to take attendance or require it, I need to make an exception in this case because of the many in-class lab exercises and the small size of the class. As mentioned above in the late homework policy, you need to alert me in advance about any anticipated absences for which there is a reasonable justification.

Academic Integrity

The Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences has asked all instructors to post a link in their course syllabi to the University's policy on academic integrity. "Academic Integrity" is the opposite of "cheating", and the message is: Don't cheat. It's unfair to your fellow students and you risk some serious trouble that is far worse than a bad grade in the course.

What constitutes cheating in this course depends upon the nature of the task you're working on. If it's a quiz or an exam, it means any communication with any person about the test questions (not including questions you ask me in order to clarify something). On the lab assignments, there really is a grey area, since I don't object to students discussing these problems with one another and sharing ideas. But the expectation is that after you have finished discussing, you go off to complete the lab excercises and prepare your solutions by yourself. Unauthorized collaboration often results in identical, or nearly-identical , files being submitted by two different students. The first time this occurs the students will receive both a warning and a grade of 0 on the assignment; the second violation will be referred to the Deans' office.

In standard programming courses, there is a big issue of students downloading code from the Web and submitting it as their own. Because of the unusual nature of both the software and the assignments in CS074, this is unlikely to be much of a problem. Still, there may be instances where you get the idea about how to complete an assigned exercise from a Web site. Usually that's ok, but I ask that you clear it with me first.


Last updated on 2-17-2008.