CS111 Policies

Collaboration Policy

It is never acceptable to present someone else's work as if it were your own. It violates the basic principles of academic honesty. Unless explicitly instructed otherwise, assume all work you hand in is to be yours and yours alone.

While you are working on a homework assignment, you may collaborate with other students by talking about the problem or your solution in a natural language (e.g., English), but you may not use any formal language, and especially not Java. In other words, you should not be looking at other people's code (or problem set solutions), and you should not show your programs to another student.

You are encouraged to use the class conference to discuss problem sets, but the same rules apply: discussions should be in English and should not include code that is part of a homework solution.

When you turn in an assignment, you must list all other students with whom you collaborated. If you get significant help from any of the course staff, including the TAs, you should acknowledge that, too. Academic honesty requires it. If you are not sure what constitutes collaboration or significant help, err on the side of caution.

You may consult public literature (books, articles, the web, etc.) for hints, techniques, and even solutions. However, you must reference any sources that contribute to your solution.

Assignments, exams, solutions and even notebooks from previous terms of CS111 are not considered to be part of the public literature — not every student has access to such materials. You must refrain from looking at any solutions from previous terms of CS111 (unless, of course, we explicitly tell you it's OK to do so).

When you use a public computer, save your work, remove the local copy when you are done, and log out. If you find someone else has forgotten to log out, then log them out without looking at any files or work in open windows.

We will interpret a violation of any of the collaboration policies stated above as a violation of the Honor Code, and will bring any such violation to the attention of the Honor Code Council. Sadly, we encounter such violations almost every semester, and the rulings of the Honor Code Council tend to be harsh. For your sake and ours, please don't be tempted to cheat; you are likely to be much better off getting a poor grade on an problem set or exam than you are if you are found guilty of cheating!


Grading Policy

Exams

Exams are graded collectively by the CS111 instructors. Many questions require us to use judgement, and we do our best to be both consistent and fair. If you think we made a mistake grading your exam, please come talk to us. Do not write on the exam at all if you will seek a regrade. We will consider the regrade and return the exam to you as soon as possible.

Homeworks

Homeworks are graded by the teaching assistants and then reviewed by the instructors.

For any problem that is not graded in detail, it is your responsibility to check your solutions using the solutions we provide. If you have questions about the solutions, ask your instructor.

Grades will be computed thus.