whale disguised as sushiCS 1110

Policies

Academic Integrity

Please take the time necessary to understand the current academic integrity policy, which applies to everyone in the class, regardless of whether you have read it. If you have questions about it, please ask.

Assessment

Students can take this course S/U. S/U students do all the same work and take all the exams that letter-grade students do; your S/U grade is computed by converting a C- or above to an S, and a D+ or below to a U.

To determine your final course grade, at the end of the semester, we first calculate your raw numerical score based on points earned on assignments and exams, according to the following weights:

There will be 5 assignments and potentially a few individually-done quizzes, with the later assignments generally having greater weight than the earlier assignments. The weights of the assignments done before the move to virtual instruction will be: A1: 4%; A2: 6%; A3: 10%, for 20% of the course grade overall. For students for whom keeping Prelim 1 is the better option, the weights for A4 and A5 will be 32.5% each, unless we include quizzes, in which case there will be adjustments. For students for whom waiving Prelim 1 is the better option, the weights for A4 and A5 with be 40% each, unless we include quizzes, in which case there will be adjustments.

Then, we make preliminary score-to-grade conversions. (We do not announce or determine grade cutoffs until semester end because we need to adjust for the difficulty of the exams and assignments each semester.)

Then, we consult your lab check-in rates. Up to two labs may be dropped; more than that, and we reserve the right to reduce your course grade by the equivalent of a "level" (e.g., from B to B-).

Next, we reserve the right to make adjustments if other considerations enter in, such as if your performance gets better or worse as the course progresses; you faced special problems such as illness; we have insight from interacting with you as to how much you learned in the class apart from what you demonstrated on the homeworks and exams; and so on.

We typically do not give out any A+s. (This helps equalize the playing field for students who don't have prior experience with respect to those who do.)

Regrade requests

If you feel that the graders have incorrectly graded an assignment, you may request a regrade. Each assessed piece of work will specify whether regrade requests should be made via (CMS) — see the instructions here — or Gradescope. Communication regarding regrade requests will be done only in writing via email/CMS/Gradescope: given the number of staff members involved in handling regrade requests, we need records of all discussions.

We want to give grades that accurately represent our assessment of your understanding of CS 1110 material. Hence, if you are given a lower score than you should have been, you should absolutely bring it to our attention via the mechanisms just described. However, we must explicitly mention an additional consequence of the importance of grade accuracy: if we notice that you have been assigned more points than you should have been, we are duty-bound to correct such scores downward to the correct value.

Exams