Jeff Kinne Course Policies

Note that many of my course policies are changing for the 2025-2026 academic year. In particular, I will be trying out allowing the use of AI on assignments, but then also focusing a much higher percentage of points on exams and interviews / demonstrations.

To see what my course policies were previously, see Jeff Kinne Course Policies 2024.

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.

Grades

Your overall course grade will be computed as: exams 60%, participation 10%, demonstrations/interviews 30%.

Exams - These will be roughly every 3 weeks (so about 5 total). Each exam will normally be worth a little bit more than the previous one. The lowest exam score will be dropped. There will be no makeup exams; if you miss an exam, then that is your dropped exam. Online students will take the exam at the same time as the rest of the class, in a lockdown browser, and will schedule an interview followup soon after the exam to confirm that this was your own work. For all students (online and face to face), for exams you are not allowed to use anything except yourself - no internet, phone, calculator, AI, communicating with other people, etc.

Participation - There will be frequent assignments. For most assignments, they will be graded strictly pass/fail based on whether you made some reasonable attempt to complete the assignment. Late work will not be accepted. My solutions will be shared with the class soon after the due date. The goal is to have frequent assignments that you do your best on, and then see my solutions so that you can more quickly learn. I will not do detailed grading on these assignments so that more of our time is spent working new problems than focusing too much on grading them. After you see my solution to a problem, you should go back to your work after class and fix your work so it is also correct.

Demonstrations/interviews/projects - Some assignments will be to demonstrate your code/solutions to the class. For some assignments, I will interview you to confirm your solutions. Some assignments will be to work on a project that is more open-ended or in-depth (and that will have a demo or interview). These are all things that give you practice on soft skills, and also allow me to confirm your understanding. You will be graded based on the understanding that is demonstrated during the demo/interview.

For each of the above categories, the total grade for that category will just be the sum of all the points in that category.

Assignments

Attribution and Comments

For all assignments that are handed in (this includes assignments, projects, or anything else that you submit for the course), you are required to have at the top of the submission a summary that includes the following elements.

• Author: your name
• Contents: what is this file for (e.g., hw 1 cs 500)
• Date: date handed in
• Summary: summary of a sentence or few
• Attributions: list of sources you used. If you used AI you need to list the prompts you used, which AI was used, and if possible a link back to the AI's responses. If you discussed with anyone, list their names and the amount of discussion. If anyone looked at your code, you need to list that. If you copy/pasted code from anywhere, you need to indicate that and give a link to where you got it from. If you started with a file from class, you list that as well. If you have no attributions to list, then just put "none".

Missing - if this summary is missing, you get a 0 for the assignment.

Inaccurate attribution - if you give an inaccurate attribution (failing to cite that you used AI, failure to indicate that you talked with someone or showed someone your code, etc.), this is academic misconduct.

Very limited effort - if I determine that you put forth very little effort on any assignment, you will get a 0 for the assignment. For example, if all you did was ask an AI for the answer and then provide the AI's response. Or, if all you did was copy code from the internet or another student.

Schedule

The default schedule for my courses is the following.

• Exams - every third week on Wednesdays. Online students take the exam at the same time as the face to face students, and should schedule a 15 minute online meeting with me for the same day as the exam at a time that is after the exam.
• Assignments - most weeks there will be multiple assignments that are graded for participation. Normally, the recommended due date is the next lecture, and my solution will be shared at the beginning of the next lecture.
• Demonstrations - we will normally have around 10 minutes per lecture that is allocated for demonstrations. Depending on the number of students in the course, each student should expect to give a demo to the class roughly every few weeks.
• Interviews - these will be conducted during office hours. These may be about once/week if I have enough time for that. Interviews for assignments will be short (5-10 minutes).
• Projects - there will normally be one or two projects per course. They will normally have multiple check points that are graded. For each check point you will meet with me for a code review.

Exam Content

Most exams will be over just the content from that period in the course. So they are cumulative only in so far as earlier content is still needed for doing the later content in the course.

Exam questions will be similar to those that were given as assignments in the class. Some questions will be identical to what was given as an assignment. Some questions will be an extension/modification of an assignment. Those who do what you are supposed to on the assignments (do them on your own as much as possible, only go to AI or others after you have struggled on your own, really understand the model solutions) should do well on the exams.

There will normally be a few exam questions that are a challenge even for the top students in the class. There will normally be a few questions that are easy even for the bottom students in the class. The goal is to have a broad range of scores so that the exam accurately measures your skills/knowledge.

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.
• Report is filed for academic misconduct (see Student Support and Accountability) violation (link to file report is https://cm.maxient.com/reporting.php?IndianaStateUniv and then select Academic Misconduct).

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.

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.