cs4111: Homework and Project Information

COMS4111, Spring 2013
Homework & Project Policies

Late Homework | Late Projects | How to Submit Late Assignments | CVN Students

Collaboration and Academic Honesty: Policies and Procedures

You are required to do the homework assignments by yourself. Collaborating with other students or copying their work or others' will not be tolerated. Anyone found copying or using another person's work will be dealt with under the Computer Science Department's procedures regarding academic honesty (see below).

You will do the projects in teams of two students. Both students in a team will receive the same grade. Team partners are expected to fully collaborate with each other on solving the project. However, communication about project details with somebody other than your partner is not permitted, and is considered cheating.

If in doubt about what kinds of consultations are allowed, please check with the instructor immediately. Please see the policies and procedures regarding academic honesty (http://www.cs.columbia.edu/education/honesty) for further details.

Homework Submission Policy

There will be four homework assignments during the semester.
Homework is generally due at the beginning of class (1:10 for Section 1 and 4:10 for Section 2) on the due date given on the homework, unless indicated otherwise.
You are required to do the homework by yourself. Please read the collaboration and academic honesty policies above for more information. It is very easy for the TAs or the instructor to find evidence of copying or cheating, and the punishments are definitely not worth the risk.
Unless we specify otherwise, students should submit their homework in hard copy. Homework may not be submitted electronically. This is a large class and the TAs cannot afford the overhead of printing out electronic homework submissions for grading.
Auditors: Only students registered for course units may turn in work to be graded.

Homework Lateness Policy

Homework submitted after the beginning of the class when it is due is considered late. Three grace days are provided for your benefit for homework, for emergencies and for those times during the semester where you need a little more time. Weekends and university holidays are not counted.

Grace days apply in whole: if you hand in a homework assignment due on Wednesday at 4:10 p.m. at, say, 5 p.m. that day, this means you have used one grace day. (There is no such thing as "a fraction of a grace day.") You can use more than one grace day on a homework assignment; alternatively, you can submit three homework assignments each one day late. It is also OK, of course, not to use any of your grace days, but after you used up those three days we will no longer accept late homework from you.

For example, if a homework assignment is due on Wednesday at 4:10 p.m. and you have not used any of your grace days, you can hand in the homework any time up to the following Monday at 4:10 p.m., using three grace days. If you do hand it in on Monday, however, you will not be able to submit any other homework late. As another example, if a homework assignment is due on Thursday at 1:10 p.m., you can submit the assignment by Friday at 1:10 p.m. using one grace day, by Monday at 1:10 p.m. using two grace days, or by Tuesday at 1:10 p.m. using three grace days.

How you use your grace days is up to you; however, we strongly suggest you save these grace days for the end of the semester when the homework assignments might get more challenging and lengthy.

Project Lateness Policy

The project lateness policy is analogous to the homework lateness policy: you have three grace days for projects, which are completely separate from -and in addition to- the three grace days for homework (i.e., you have three grace days for homework plus three grace days for projects). The rules for using the project grace days are the same as for the homework grace days (see above).

Important note on project and homework grace days: The grace days for projects are completely separate from the three grace days for homework. In particular, you cannot "transfer" unused project grace days and use them to submit homework late; similarly, you cannot "transfer" unused homework grace days and use them to submit projects late.

Important note on teams: To use a late day for a project, both team partners must have a project grace day available each, and they will both be deducted one project grace day each. If you change team partners and your new partner does not have any project grace days left, then unfortunately you will not be able to use any grace days for the project.

Late Submissions

Late submissions for an assignment for which we asked a hard-copy of your solutions should be done in one of the following two ways:

Bring your late assignment to any of the TA's office hours and hand deliver your assignment, or
At courseworks select the site for our class. From the left pane, select "Assignments" and then the assignment (e.g., "HW1", "Project 1.1" and so on) for which you want to submit your answers. Go to the "Submission" section and submit your answer.

Special Note for CVN Students

In general, we don't distinguish between in-class and CVN students. The homework and project assignments and their deadlines (including grace days as discussed above) are exactly the same as with the in-class students, with a few exceptions that we will explicitly note. Your work is graded by the same TAs in the same way the work of in-class students is graded. CVN students must follow the lectures, watch this class website for postings, follow the activities going on CourseWorks, and take the exams on exactly the same schedule as in-class students. In particular, you should check with CVN on how to make arrangements to take the midterm and final exams at your location as we do not handle or have any control over any of these administrative issues.

For all the above reasons, please ensure in advance that you will not have any business trips, important deadlines, etc, that conflict with the course, since no exceptions will be made.

Exceptions that apply to CVN students:

CVN students have the option to submit their work electronically, in the same way described in the previous section for "Late Submissions".
For the projects, CVN students have the option not to form a 2-person team and, instead, do the work by themselves.

Questions?

If you don't understand any of the above, either post a comment to the class discussion board or contact a TA or the professor immediately so that ambiguities can be avoided at the last minute.