Course Policies
Professor Munindar P. Singh
These are the policies I follow in all of my courses. Your
specific course may have no project, so the project-related policies
won't apply to it. Each course has a schedule with its
deliverables.
- The university, college, and department policies against academic
dishonesty will be strictly enforced. You should review the NCSU
Code
of Student Conduct.
- Unless otherwise specified, every gradable part of the course
requires individual work. Where collaboration is permitted,
students may discuss problems with each other, but the solutions
must still reflect their individual understanding. All kinds of
collusion will be subject to disciplinary action. Students must
acknowledge sources such as books (other than the textbook) and old
assignments. Unacknowledged use of any such material is subject to
disciplinary action. Any attempts to circumvent computing system
security or interfere with others' work will also be subject to
disciplinary action.
- In particular:
- Don't give help to anyone.
- Don't take help from anyone.
- Here are some additional points specific to exams:
- Don't keep any copies of the exams.
- Don't discuss the exam with others or post anything about it on
the course message board until I have returned the graded exams back
to you and informed you that everyone's exams have been received.
- Homework and project deadlines are firm.
- In general, I will accept homeworks, term papers, programming
assignments, and project reports that are up to one week late
with a 20% reduction in grade.
- However, once I discuss a homework in class or post a solution, I
will no longer accept submissions.
- Please note that computer systems tend to break at the least
convenient time. This happens remarkably often close to programming
deadlines and late in the semester, partly because of the extra load
at such times. Please factor in some slack in your schedule.
- Please turn off all your electronic gadgets during class.
On occasion, we will do exercises in class for which you may use
your computers. I will let you know if and when that happens. The
rest of the time, which is most of the time, please leave
your computers with their screens down.
- Students are responsible for updating their email address in
WolfWare records, and for monitoring their email for any
course-related announcements. I send a test message early in the
semester; contact the TA if you don't receive it. You will be added
or deleted from the mailing list automatically based on your
registration status for the course. The TA can insert and remove
additional addresses, but neither the TA nor the instructor can
remove your main WolfWare address from a mailing list.
- Classes taught in the Engineering Online program have video
streams recorded. These are managed by the EOL program and may be
restricted to EOL students. If you are an EOL student and can't get
to the class videos, please contact one of the EOL program
staff.
- I give take-home exams and would allow several days for you to
work on the exam. Please plan your work so that you have time to
work on the exam.
- Collusion or cheating of any form are forbidden. You can be asked
to explain your solutions verbally.
- Do not use red ink.
- I never ask any trick questions. Feel free to make additional
assumptions, but state them and be prepared to justify them.
- You can get partial credit for an English description in most cases.
- When a project requires teamwork, project teams ought not change
over the semester. However, I would allow changing teams in
principle. I encourage you to to resolve technical differences with
your team-members through discussion. Each member of the team is
expected to work equally hard. However, if you find that a member
of your team is not working satisfactorily, you should let the TA
and me know as soon as you are convinced that it is so. We will
entertain complaints about team members throughout the semester,
and may reduce the credit for any person we find not working
satisfactorily.
- I encourage class participation. Participation means asking good
questions and responding to my questions. I assign problems to work
on during class - work on them! I call on students during class -
be alert! (Sometimes students are tempted to attempt to answer
class problems by peeking ahead in the textbook or in posted notes
and slides. This rarely works. Please think by yourself!)
- Please specify the course and section in your message. Please
direct questions as follows. Please don't use the message board for
questions where you want the TA or me to take specific action. Also
don't use the message board for questions about how your homework,
program, or exam was graded. Use the message board for general
programming related questions for which it is OK to share knowledge
(don't post code listings that give away part of a solution that
students or teams are supposed to obtain by themselves.
- General content and exams: to me and cc the TA.
- Homeworks: to the TA and cc me.
- Videos and notes posted by the EOL Program Office: to the EOL
Program Office.
- Problems with accounts, servers, submit, grade book, ...: to the
TA and cc me.
- Missing or erroneous grades: to the TA and cc me.
- Misc (looking for teams, programming bugs, ...): to the message board.
- Questions about policies and schedules: If you find an
error, please let me know, but don't send around emails requesting
information that's on the Web.
- In the interest of fairness, I often post answers to questions
asked privately or by email on the course mailing list.
- For campus students: I expect close to perfect attendance.
If you miss a class, you don't need to tell me, but it is your
responsibility to make up missed work. (You will lose participation
points for missing class.)
- Mainly for international students: You have my permission to
skip up to six classes on the condition that you don't expect me to
produce emails or sign any forms to that effect. This condition is
nonnegotiable. If you like, you can forward a link to this document
to the appropriate authorities as proof of my permission.
- Although I make all my prepared slides available, there is a lot of
value added in class. Only rarely can a student do well on an exam
without having regularly attended class, physically or
virtually.
- My exams involve more than a rote repetition of the course
material, so that differences in grades reflect differences in
understanding. Scores would generally not be clustered at the top.
Thus if a good student does poorly on one exam, they can easily
catch up in other exams. If scores were clustered high, you could
never recover from a minor mistake. For this reason, even a
relatively low score in the exams may translate into a high grade,
depending of course on other performance.
- I emphasize quality of work rather than quantity of work. You do
have to perform all the tasks required but going beyond doesn't
help. You cannot make up for a poor showing on an exam through
extra credit.
- The assignment of grades in a course should be independent of
other considerations. In particular, please don't try to pressure
me based on facts such as that a certain grade will spoil your summa
cum laude status, delay your graduation, cost you your financial
aid, get you kicked out of the program, or whatever. To the extent
that these regulations depend on a student's GPA, it is because of
the expectation that the grades won't be manipulated. Besides it
won't be fair to others.
- I assign +/- grades.
- Grading is relative. I have no preset thresholds for any letter
grade.
- The weights of different components of the course are specified in
the course description. I generally assign nominal grades based on
the total score. However, I also look at the whole record to decide
if a student merits a better grade than the nominal one.
Specifically, I consider the score in the exams seriously in moving
students to a better grade. That is, in the end, thresholds based
on total score only partially determine the letter grade: a student
with a lower total score can get a better grade.
- Note that the Department of Computer Science does not allow
audits in graduate courses.
- Prerequisites are waived for enrollment as an audit student. Audit
requirements for all my courses are 90% attendance.
- Credit requirements for all my courses are 90% attendance and a
grade of C or better in any exam.
- Please note that I don't handle enrollment: you need to go
through the Registrar's Office or through the CSC Undergraduate or
Graduate Offices.
- Our department sometimes restricts enrollment in our courses to
computer science students. I cannot—and in general do not
want to—override the departmental policy.
Reasonable accommodations will be made for students with verifiable
disabilities. In order to take advantage of available
accommodations, students must register with the Disability Resource
Office at Holmes Hall, Suite 304, 2751 Cates Avenue, Campus Box
7509, 919-515-7653. For more information on NC State's policy on
working with students with disabilities, please see the Academic
Accommodations for Students with Disabilities Regulation
(NCSU REG
02.20.01).
These components may present privacy, copyright, or accessibility
concerns for students.
- Moodle for assignments
- Google groups for communications
- Piazza (potentially) for message boards
- EOL video recordings and postings
- Zoom for office hours
Students may be required to disclose personally identifiable information to other students in the course, via digital tools, such as email or web-postings, where relevant to the course. Examples include online discussions of class topics, and posting of student coursework. All students are expected to respect the privacy of each other by not sharing or using such information outside the course.
Students are responsible for reviewing the PRRs which pertain to
their course rights and responsibilities. These
include: http://policies.ncsu.edu/policy/pol-04-25-05
(Equal Opportunity and Non-Discrimination Policy
Statement), http://oied.ncsu.edu/oied/policies.php
(Office for Institutional Equity and
Diversity), http://policies.ncsu.edu/policy/pol-11-35-01
(Code of Student Conduct),
and http://policies.ncsu.edu/regulation/reg-02-50-03
(Grades and Grade Point Average).
I encourage you to review the ACM code available here.