Jeff Kinne Course Policies

This page contains information about the course policies in courses with Jeff Kinne as instructor.

Policies

The following policies are in effect.

• All CS Policies are in effect.

Academic Misconduct

• Sharing solutions to assignments, quizzes, exams: 0 tolerance. If you are caught giving your solutions to another student or receiving solutions from anyone (whether a student or not), you will receive an F for the course and have a report of academic misconduct filed against you.
• Sharing solutions to assignments, quizzes, exams if you are not a current student in the course but are found to be sharing your solutions with students in one of my courses, I will (a) never write a letter of recommendation for you, and (b) file a report of academic misconduct against you.
• Copying from the internet or elsewhere: 0 tolerance. If you copy from the internet or anywhere other than our course content, you will receive an F in the course and have a report of academic misconduct filed against you. The following are allowed: copying from files given to you by myself, copying from recommended/required texts for the course, using your own code from previous coursework or projects provided you mention this in a comment right where it is used. For any other situation, you need to ask permission before using anything else, and if given permission by myself you need to indicate in a comment that you asked for and received permission. Note that this applies as well to searching on the web (stackoverflow, geeksforgeeks, etc.) - you need permission to use anything from any of these cites.
  • Copying something and not giving a citation: not allowed, 0 tolerance.
• For quizzes and exams, each student needs to take the quiz/exam on a different computer (even if the quiz/exam is a take-home online one that can be taken over a period of time). Taking a quiz or exam on the same computer as another student in the course: not allowed, 0 tolerance.
• For a quiz/exam, asking any AI, person, forum, etc. anything related to the exam or quiz: not allowed, 0 tolerance. This includes asking anything related (e.g., "how do for loops work in Python", "how does a binary search tree work", "how do you proof by induction") while taking a quiz/exam.

Quizzes

Quizzes will normally be taken online asynchronously and will be "closed everything". You will take the quiz in a lockdown browser, and you are not allowed to use notes, other devices, or communicate with anyone while taking the quiz. You should take the quiz just as if you were taking it in the classroom on paper - all you are allowed is the quiz itself, the built-in calculator in the lockdown browser, and blank paper for scratch work. Quizzes will normally be set so that you have 1 week to take the quiz, you will have 2 chances to take the quiz, and the higher score is the one that counts.

Quizzes will normally be timed, so you should definitely study before taking the quiz. For most quizzes, there will be a practice quiz available that you can also try out. The practice quiz is normally very similar to the actual quiz, so you should practice with the practice quiz to make sure you will do well.

For quiz questions that are "fill in the blank", you MUST give the exact answer as the quiz expects it. If there is a practice quiz available, then you are responsible for taking the practice quiz to make sure you have the correct formatting on your answers. Fill in the blank questions are normally auto-graded, and I will normally NOT go back and give partial credit. It is your responsibility to take the practice quiz to make sure you have the formatting correct.

Note: there are two main goals for quizzes - (1) you should study for them, and this helps you learn the material better, and (2) they let you and myself know how you are doing with the material. You are supposed to study for the quizzes. You are supposed to study for the quizzes. You are supposed to study for the quizzes.

Exams

For students who are face to face students, you are required to take the exams in person in the classroom. Even if you are registered for the online section of the course, you are required to take the exam in person. Note - if you are registered for the online section and are registered for another course at the same time as this course, then ask for alternative arrangements at the beginning of the semester.

For distance students, you will take exams in the same way that you take the quizzes - with a lockdown browser, "closed everything", etc.

All students, both face to face students and distance students, will take the exams at the same time. The dates and times for the exams are included in the syllabus, and you are required to take the exams at these times.

Note: the reason to have everyone take the exam at the same time, and to make face to face students take the exam in the classroom is - to prevent cheating. Sadly, if I don't do it like this, a significant fraction of the class will cheat on the exams. I apologize for the inconvenience, but this is just the way it is.

For distance students who take the exam online, there will be a follow-up interview required as well. For the follow-up interview, I will pick questions that are similar to the online exam and ask you to solve them. The reason for this - to confirm your performance on the online exam. If a distance student does not do the follow-up interview, you will get a 0 for the exam. If a distance student does significantly worse on the follow-up interview than on the online exam, this is a sign to me that you cheated on the exam (this is the reason to do the follow-up interview - to keep everyone honest).

Note: for all students, if your performance on exams is significantly worse than your performance on quizzes and assignments/labs, that is suspicious, and I will look into it. Again, I hate to say all of this, but every semester I have to do all of this to keep people from cheating. The goal of the course is for you to have skills/knowledge, not just that you can find the answers by asking others, AIs, etc.

Late work

Assignments/Labs Assignments are given a due date when they should be turned in. Late submissions will be accepted as long as - we have not gone over the correct solutions in class, and I have not started grading the assignments yet.

Quizzes For most quizzes, you will have a week to take the quiz. There will be no makeups or late quizzes; if you don't take the quiz it will be a 0.

Exams There will be no makeup exams. If you miss an exam, the final exam replaces the grade of the exam you miss. If you miss the final exam, it will be a 0.

Overall Course Grade

Your overall course grade will result from the simple total of all points in the course. I normally weight the exams so the exams are worth about 50% of the total grade, with each exam worth more than previous ones. There will normally be 2 exams (a midterm and a final).

Note that for the final exam, if you do better on that than the earlier exams then only the final exam counts.

Grading Programs and Problems

• Programs: sometimes will be given scores for correctness, style, and being safe/secure code. By default, 1/2 of the points are for correctness, 1/4 for style, 1/4 for being safe/secure. Sometimes only the correctness will be graded. For programming style, see Programming Style - Generic. For safe/secure code, see Programming safe and secure code - generic.
• Math/proofs/essays: sometimes will be given scores for correctness and style. By default, 2/3 of the points are for correctness and 1/3 for style. Points are subtracted for any statement that you include that is false - so you should avoid a brain dump of every thought that you have because I will take off for things that you say that are not correct. For style in writing math/proofs/essay responses, see CS Writing Style - Generic.
• Assignment grading: assignments will normally be graded only once, with no late work accepted. You should turn in whatever you have by the due date so that you get some points and feedback. If late work will be accepted for an assignment, that will be announced.

Course Outcomes

For each assignment or problem, I might list the specific course outcomes being measured by that assignment or problem. I can use this information in evaluating how the class is doing overall, and I can also use this to help in writing letters of reference later on.

Complaints or Questions

If you have any complaints or questions about anything in a course, you should always communicate with the instructor first. If you skip communicating with the instructor and go straight to complaining to someone else (your advisor, the department chairperson, the dean, the university president, etc.), they will generally tell you that you need to talk to the instructor first.

Course Policies Quiz

The following is a quiz over Jeff Kinne's course policies: sample quiz. The link is to a practice quiz that you can try out. Those enrolled in the course need to take the quiz within the course for it to count. For Jeff Kinne's courses, you are required to score a 100% on this quiz within the first week of classes in order to continue in the course. Note that you will be able to take the quiz multiple times. If you choose not to score 100% on this quiz you should drop the course.