Course Policies

Table of contents

  1. Communication
  2. Lecture
  3. Recitation
  4. Office Hours
  5. Textbook & Quizzes
  6. Grading
  7. Late Day Policy
  8. Extensions
  9. Academic Integrity
  10. Guidelines for the Use of Generative AI in this Course
  11. Students with Disabilities
  12. Diversity and Inclusion
  13. Mental Health Resources

Communication

Please join the course’s EdStem forum through Canvas. We will use Ed (not email, not Canvas) for nearly all communication in the course. You should use Ed to ask questions and contact TAs, although you may choose to email Harry for sensitive questions.

Lecture

Lectures are Mondays and Wednesdays from 3:30-5:00PM Eastern in Berger Auditorium. Attendance is expected. Lecture recordings will be made available to all students shortly after the end of class provided that attendance remains high enough.

Recitation

Recitation will be held on Fridays from 10:15AM-11:45AM and from 12:00PM-1:30PM. You must be registered for at least one of these sections. These sections will begin with a brief review session, followed by about an hour to work on a problem set. These problem sets can be completed collaboratively and are designed to be completed within an hour.

Every few weeks, recitation will include a mandatory problem solving assessment. The first such activity will take place on Friday, January 31st. These assessments will require you to solve interview-style questions on paper. Credit will be awarded for showing effort, demonstrating your thinking about the problem, and providing a correct solution.

Recitation attendance is mandatory and counts for a portion of your recitation grade. By default, students will receive 7% of their final grade for recitation attendance and 18% for their performance on the problem solving activities (there are five, of which the lowest will be automatically dropped.) Students can request excused absences; each absence will reallocate one percentage point from the attendance component back to the problem solving activity.

For example, a student with perfect attendance at recitation will receive a full 7% for attendance, and their highest four activity scores will be counted for the remaining 18 percentage points of their recitation grade.

A student with one excused and one unexcused absence will receive 5 percentage points out of a maximum of an adjusted six for attendance. Their remaining recitation points, counted out of 19, will be determined based on their activity performance.

Office Hours

Office Hours will be held throughout the week.

Times for OH TBD, announcements will be made on Ed and the final schedule will eventually be visible on the “Schedule” tab.

Here are some guidelines to help you understand how to use OH

  • What you can get help with:
    • questions about course content
    • clarifications about the assignment instructions
    • a quick check-in about your plan for completing the assignment
    • difficulties in submitting their work in the proper format to the autograder
    • parsing out the outputs from the autograder
    • writing a test case or two that might help you get unstuck
  • What you cannot get help with:
    • details about the autograder test cases at a medium or low level beyond what is written in the autograder output
    • open ended questions like “my code isn’t working!”
    • unfocused debugging journeys that are not based on a test case that they have written.

Office hours work best for everybody when the student comes with a focused question. It may not always be possible for you to articulate what, exactly, is going wrong with your code, but you should always be able to write or demonstrate a failing unit test at the least. This will help keep queues short and spirits high.

Textbook & Quizzes

We will use an online interactive textbook for this course. The book is free and open source and it contains a number of quizzes that will make up a portion of your grade for this class. The textbook that we will use is adapted from this site, although you will navigate to it through Canvas.

We have used both free and paid interactive textbooks for previous iterations of this course, both of which cover the same contents. Students have appreciated the polish of the paid product but were displeased by the price. The free book that we use will save you about $75, but you should be prepared to tolerate a few stylistic “rough edges.”

The quizzes for each module will be due at the start of the following module. There will be no quizzes due for the first module of the course.

Grading

Component Weight Evaluation
Homework 70% Based on correctness, style, and testing.
Exam 0% There is NO timed exam.
Reading Quizzes 5% Assigned from the Online Textbook; 80% completion of all quizzes is required for full credit.
Recitation & Problem Solving Activities 25% This work is evaluated based on correctness and credible effort to complete recitation tasks.

Receiving a passing grade in the class requires good attendance, consistent effort to complete assigned work, and submission of a credible project. Higher grades require increasingly better completion of assigned work and higher evaluations on the project.

There is no rounding up of course grades.

Late Day Policy

Each assignment can be submitted one day late for a penalty of -10 percentage points (e.g. on a 200 point assignment, the submission will receive a -20 point deduction), or two-to-five days late for a penalty of -20 percentage points. No submissions are accepted after 120 hours. If you submit two or fewer assignments late, the late penalty will be refunded at the end of the semester.

Students will also have the opportunity to resubmit up to two homework assignments at the end of the semester. The maximum grade that can be earned from such a resubmission is 75%.

Some notes:

  • You can use late days automatically without asking.
  • Earlier homework assignments are not always easier than later ones.
  • Late days should not be used for health-related issues. See below for more details.

Extensions

If you are experiencing a health issue, which may include mental health issues or issues relating to avoiding/preventing Covid-19, make a private post on Ed and we will grant you an extension. Late days and extensions cannot be combined.

Please note that you must ask for an extension and get it approved before the assignment is due. Extension requests submitted or viewed after the assignment deadline will not be granted. Note that this means that asking for an extension shortly before the due date of an assignment is not advisable since the course staff are not responsible for arbitrarily fast turnaround on Ed posts.

Academic Integrity

Note that all homework submissions are checked for evidence of plagiarism.

Academic dishonesty carries tremendous penalty, and we use software to detect offenses.

Submitted homework must be your individual work.

It is Not OK to:

  • Copy or otherwise look at someone else’s code
  • Share your code in any way (copy-paste, github, paper and pencil, …)
  • Use code from a previous semester

It is OK (and encouraged!) to:

  • Discuss concepts
  • Discuss of debugging strategies
  • Verbally share experience

For more information refer to Penn’s code of academic integrity.

Guidelines for the Use of Generative AI in this Course

We recognize the increasing prevalence and power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, and encourage their responsible and ethical use to enhance your learning experience. However, it’s essential to develop a strong understanding of fundamental processes before relying on AI. To that end, we provide some examples where AI tools are acceptable and unacceptable.

Examples of acceptable uses of AI:

  • Comprehension and Expansion: It is acceptable to use AI to clarify and expand your understanding of lecture notes, slides, and provided code examples.
  • Research and Information Gathering: AI can supplement your research and information gathering, aiding your exploration of complex concepts.

Examples of unacceptable uses of AI:

  • Assignment Completion: You may not use AI for generating code or text for assignments. This includes written responses to README questions.
  • Academic Integrity: Do not present AI-generated content without citation and as your own work. If you ask generative AI a question about a topic and it teaches you a new Python idiom, you should make sure to cite the AI when you use that code in this class.

Engaging in unacceptable use of AI tools will result in logistical & academic consequences. One important example is that students who are unable to explain their own solutions may have their Ed/OH questions rejected. Serious issues of academic integrity may include grade penalties, academic warnings, or other actions.

Students with Disabilities

If you have a disability for which you are or may be requesting accommodations, please contact both your professor and the Office of Student Disabilities Services as early as possible in the semester.

The Office of Student Disabilities Services is available to assist faculty, academic support staff, and students in reaching a joint determination of academic accommodations, where needed.

Weingarten Learning Resources Center Office of Learning Resources Office of Student Disabilities Services

3702 Spruce Street, Suite 300 (Stouffer Commons) Philadelphia, PA 19104-6027

Diversity and Inclusion

We would like to create a learning environment that supports a diversity of thoughts,perspectives and experiences, and honors your identities. To help accomplish this:

If you have a name and/or set of pronouns that differ from those that appear in your official Penn records, please let us know! If you feel like your performance in the class is being impacted by your experiences outside of class, please don’t hesitate to come and talk with us. As a participant in course discussions, office hours, and recitations, you should also strive to honor the diversity of your classmates. If you ever are struggling and just need someone to talk to, feel free to stop by office hours, or to reach out to an instructor and we can arrange a private meeting with an assurance of full confidentiality.

Mental Health Resources

If you experience significant stress or worry, changes in mood, or problems eating or sleeping this semester, whether because of CIT 5940 or other courses or factors, please do not hesitate to reach out immediately to any of the course staff to discuss. Everyone can benefit from support during challenging times. Not only are we happy to listen and make accommodations, we can also refer you to additional support structures on campus, including, but not limited to:

Student Health & Conseling: 215-898-7021 Programs for Student Wellness through the VPUL Student Health Services Reach-a-Peer Helpline (RAP-line) which is available nightly from 9pm-1am at 215-573-2727; you can text them anytime at 215-515-7332. If you or someone you know is in distress and poses an immediate danger to self or others please contact the Department of Public Safety at 215-898-7333, or 511.