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, copying a small code snippet from an online source showing how to do something basic provided you also give a link to where you got it from right where it is used, 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.

Late work

Assignments Assignments will normally be graded twice - the first time soon after the due date, and a second time a bit later (a few days or a week). After the second grading deadline, late work will not be graded (i.e., you get a 0 at that point).

Quizzes Quizzes will be taken through canvas during the last 30 minutes of lecture time for the week. If you miss this time slot for a reason approved by the instructor ahead of time, the instructor will either allow you to take the quiz later or will just not count the quiz for you.

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 have three components: lectured content, professionalism, and ingenuity problems. See next bullet points about each. The formula for the overall course grade is:
  60% * (lectured content grade) + 20% * (professionalism grade) + 20% * (ingenuity problems grade).
• Professionalism: attendance, turning in assignments on time, being attentive in class, good communication inside and outside of class.
• Lectured content: problems that are over content that were included in lecture.
• Ingenuity problems: problems that require you to figure out something new, more than "just" being similar to things we did in lecture.
• Note that some problems on assignments, quizzes, and exams will be labeled as "ingenuity problem". Those will go into the "ingenuity problems" grade. Unlabeled problems (the default) are counted as part of the "lectured content" grade.

Note that I separate your grade into the three categories (lectured content, professionalism, ingenuity) because these are the most important goals for my courses. I will pay attention to these sub-scores in evaluating how you are doing in the course (you could be doing fine in one area and not in another, and the sub-scores will give me a quick view of that), and also in writing letters of reference for students that ask for them later on.

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

Grading Programs and Problems

• Programs: 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: 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 twice, because the goal is for you to master the content and communicate it well. You should turn in as much as you have by the first assignment due date, and again by the final deadline. You will receive an email with details on what you need to fix after the first round of grading; if you do not turn anything in then you will not get this feedback.

Course Outcomes

For each assignment or problem, I will 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.