We recognize that students enter CSE247 with a wide variety of backgrounds. Therefore, CSE247 strives for a non-competitive learning environment. Our aim is to help you learn, not filter you out. To avoid putting you in competition with your classmates, we will never adjust your grade downward to achieve a particular average or score distribution. We reserve the right to adjust an assignment or exam upward in the event that it proves unexpectedly challenging for a majority of the class.
Your semester score is computed as the following weighted average:
| Component | Weight |
|---|---|
| Studio | 19% |
| Labs | 20% |
| Course Evaluation | 1% |
| Exam 1 | 20% |
| Exam 2 | 20% |
| Exam 3 | 20% |
Each lab and each studio will be equally weighted.
Your letter grade in this course will be based on your semester score. No rounding is performed on your semester score: you must have at least the stated number of points to earn the associated grade. The following table explains how the score is converted into a letter grade:
| Score | Grade Option |
|---|---|
| 97 | A+ |
| 93 | A |
| 90 | A- |
| 87 | B+ |
| 83 | B |
| 80 | B- |
| 77 | C+ |
| 73 | C |
| 70 | C- |
| 60 | D |
| 0 | F |
If you are taking the course pass/fail, a grade of at least C- is required to pass.
Once a grade for an assignment has been posted, you have one week to ask for a review of that grade. It is your responsibility to check your grades and, if needed, to request a regrade within the allotted time period. Regrade requests are to be submitted via Gradescope.
Regrade requests must be submitted with specific information about which parts you think were graded incorrectly, plus an explanation of why you think the grading was done incorrectly.
A regrade request triggers a review of all aspects of the assignment, not just the part being questioned. It is possible that this review will result in a lower revised score, so proceed carefully.
Any assignment originally submitted on paper must be submitted for a regrade with no alteration of its contents. Coding assignments in your repository will be considered in the state they were in as of the date that they were originally turned in. It is a violation of academic integrity to claim a modified assignment as your original when requesting a regrade.
Gradescope makes it very easy to submit a regrade request. Please do not abuse this feature with spurious or "just in case" requests-- you should believe your work was in fact incorrectly graded to submit a request, not just that you might get a few points back if you try. Egregious or repeated spurious requests may result in the loss of regrade request privileges.
Appeals made beyond the one-week request period will not be considered. Emails or Piazza posts concerning regrades past the one-week request period may go unanswered.
Success in this course depends on keeping up with the assignments. However, we understand that your life can occasionally make it difficult to complete an assignment on time. With these considerations in mind, we have established the following late policy. Please read it carefully so that you understand your options. Exceptions to this policy will be granted only in the case of a documented extended illness or a documented family emergency. Foreseeable events such as travel, religious holidays, interviews, and so forth will not be considered grounds for an extension.
Each student is issued one (virtual) late coupon for use during the semester. Your late coupon can be used to extend the due date for one lab by exactly one week. No penalty will be assessed for this late lab, but the coupon will be consumed. Using a late coupon is the only mechanism for submitting a lab late. Again, both your code and your writeup must be received on time for your lab to be considered on-time. If either is submitted after the deadline, the entire lab will be considered late. Consult the course calendar for assignment due dates and exam dates.
Work turned in after the deadline (accounting for a late coupon if used) will receive no credit and will not be graded.
Your grade will be based on whatever is present in your repository as of the lab's due date and time. Start your labs right away, so that you have time to complete and submit them by the due date. If you wait until the last minute and get stuck, you may have trouble getting help.
Campus computing labs or network connectivity may become unavailable for brief periods due to unforeseen circumstances. Such outages are to be expected and will not normally be grounds for a deadline extension. Problems with your own computing infrastructure (laptop failures, loss of home or dorm Internet connectivity, etc.) are not grounds for an extension either. Commit and push your lab work to your repository often and leave time to spare near the deadline to ensure your work is successfully uploaded on time. Always verify your code submissions by logging into Bitbucket.org and checking that your most recent code is there. Always verify that your written assignments have been correctly submitted.
Engineering IT maintains a list of labs available for your use (here); each lab has an availability schedule posted outside its door. Some labs are available 24/7 with no classes scheduled and all lab machines have Eclipse pre-loaded on them, so you always have a machine available on which to do your work even if your own machine is experiencing problems. If you do use a campus machine, import your repository into Eclipse at the start of your work session and remember to commit and push your work at the end of your session.
We strongly recommend that you attend lecture regularly to keep up with the course material. Although a textbook and on-line resources are provided, they are not intended to substitute for attending class. If you must miss lecture on a given day, we recommend obtaining notes from another student or otherwise reviewing what you missed.
Note that if you cannot attend your usual lecture section on a given day, you are welcome to attend that day's other section, which will cover the same material.
Studio attendance is mandatory, as your active engagement during studio time is a learning mechanism not just for you but for your fellow classmates. You must attend your studio section to receive credit -- studio sections have limited hardware and TA capacity, so we cannot allow students to switch sections in order to make up missed studios.
An excused absence from studio may be requested by filling out the
appropriate form on the course website explaining the reason for the
absence (e.g., illness, out-of-town job interview, religious holiday).
Excused absences will not be granted for social events or because you
made an appointment that happens to conflict with your assigned studio
time.
An excused studio absence must be made up for credit in TA office hours (not another studio section) within one week of the absence. Unexcused studio absences may not be made up for credit, though we recommend that you complete the studio anyway.
Your first unexcused studio absence, as well as any excused absence that is not made up within the required time period, will result in loss of credit for that studio. More than one unexcused studio absence is a serious impediment to your learning and that of your classmates and will result in loss of at least 50% of your studio credit for the semester.
CSE247R is one-credit offering separate from the main course. Because the R section is graded pass/fail, attendance and active participation are paramount. Because the section meets only once a week, each meeting is important. You are therefore allowed only two excused absences and one unexcused absence from R sessions over the course of the semester. Please clear excused absences with the head TA for 247R before the session you will miss by requesting an excused absence via a private note to the 247R forum on Piazza.
Academic integrity is an essential characteristic of any scholar, and we expect you to maintain a high standard of integrity as a part of our Washington University learning community. We take as our baseline standard of academic integrity the Undergraduate Student Academic Integrity Policy, which you are responsible for reading and following.
If in doubt about whether a particular behavior violates the collaboration policy, please ask your instructor or TAs in advance. Given the gravity of violating the collaboration policy, it's much better to err on the side of caution than to unwittingly violate the policy.
In this course you will have many opportunities to work together with other students, plus some opportunities to work alone. In general, the following principles should be followed:
Honestly represent your work
The material you turn in for course credit must be a fair representation of your own work. Copying from another person's work without proper attribution is strictly prohibited. (As documented below, for some kinds of assignments, copying is prohibited even with attribution.)
Give help appropriately
When helping someone, it is important not to simply give them a solution, not only because that would violate the collaboration policy but also because supplying one-time answers without imparting how to arrive at those answers is not helpful in the long run. It's much more effective to take the time to help someone think through a problem and develop the solution. Often, this can be accomplished by asking a series of leading questions.
Give credit for help received
If you receive help from others (besides the TAs and the instructor) in completing your assignment, you must list their names as part of your submission. If you use websites or forums such as Stack Overflow for any non-trivial code, you must include the URL at which you found the information. A good definition of "non-trivial code" is anything that you could not reasonably expect to find documented as an example in the "getting started" guide for your programming language. For example, a very clever one-liner solution may require a citation, whereas several lines of boilerplate text parsing may not. When in doubt, cite!
Remember that the best way to build confidence as well as proficiency in any discipline is through repeated practice and achievement. Do not deny yourself or anyone else in the course the gratification of earning an understanding of the material through study and hard work.
The following guidelines more specifically explain what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable collaboration for different aspects of this course.
You are expected to work with other students on studios. However, when doing so, you should not touch anyone else's keyboard. It can be tempting to help someone through a solution simply by typing it up for them in their own code, but this approach does not aid their understanding (or yours!) to nearly the same extent as helping them discover what to type for themselves. Try to work together to formulate a solution to each studio exercise.
Of course, just as you should not simply give code to someone else, you should not accept it from someone else to complete your studio. This means not copying someone else's code (unless you developed it collaboratively) and not seeking a worked solution online.
Labs are a chance to assess what you individually have learned in the course. As such, you are expected to work alone on lab code. The code you submit must be your own. We will run analysis programs to detect whether your code has been copied from others' solutions, both in the current and in previous offerings of the course. Note that our analyzer is able to recognize copying even if you change spacing and variable names.
You may discuss ideas and general approaches to a lab with others, but those discussions should not involve any exchange of code. In general, you may not walk away from such a discussion with any written or electronic materials, and we highly recommend that you then do something else for at least an hour before you write your code. (This rule prevents you from simply regurgitating someone else's code from your short-term memory.)
You must list the names of everyone (other than the instructor and TAs) with whom you have discussed a lab in the header block comment of your lab solutions.
Example of permissible conversation: discussing how the heapify()
function should change an example heap.
Examples of violations:
heapify() function should have;Under no circumstances whatsoever should you view a finished or attempted solution not generated by you to any part of a lab assignment before the final due date, including another student's code. This applies even if you have already submitted your own code-- it is easy to accidentally give too much "help" after you have finished the assignment yourself.
Please do not post your code to a public repository on, e.g., GitHub either during or after the semester. Your responsibility to uphold the integrity of the course material does not end when you finish the class.
It should go without saying that you may not collaborate in any way on exams nor obtain an advantage by looking at another student's exam (from this or any past semester). The academic integrity policy for exams also includes all instructions given before and during exams, such as instructions regarding seating, start and end times, and which materials are allowed during an exam.
In cases where a student is found to have violated the course
collaboration policy, the instructor will work with the Academic
Integrity Office to choose a suitable sanction. Sanctions may include
loss of credit greater than that allotted for the assignment on which
the violation occurred, failure of the course, and/or such other
disciplinary actions as are warranted and allowed by Washington University.
Given the availability of TAs, the Piazza forum, and other legitimate
sources of help, the instructor is not likely to advocate for leniency
in cases of policy violation.
Note that claiming that you 'forgot' to attribute a source is not a mitigating circumstance. It is your responsibility to give credit where credit is due on your assignments.
Students with documented disabilities are strongly encouraged both to bring any additional considerations to the attention of the instructor and to make full use of the University's Disability Resource Center.
The University is committed to offering reasonable academic accommodations to students who are victims of sexual assault. Students are eligible for accommodation regardless of whether they seek criminal or disciplinary action. Depending on the specific nature of the allegation, such measures may include but are not limited to: implementation of a no-contact order, course/classroom assignment changes, and other academic support services and accommodations. If you need to request such accommodations, please direct your request to Kim Webb, Director of the Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention Center, or Jen Durham Austin, Support Services Counselor. Both Kim Webb and Jen Durham Austin are confidential resources; however, requests for accommodations will be shared with the appropriate University administration and faculty. The University will maintain as confidential any accommodations or protective measures provided to an individual student so long as it does not impair the ability to provide such measures.
If a student comes to me to discuss or disclose an instance of sexual assault, sex discrimination, sexual harassment, dating violence, domestic violence or stalking, or if I otherwise observe or become aware of such an allegation, I will keep the information as private as I can, but as a faculty member of Washington University, I am required to immediately report it to my Department Chair or Dean or directly to Ms. Jessica Kennedy, the University’s Title IX Director. If you would like to speak with directly Ms. Kennedy directly, she can be reached at (314) 935-3118, jwkennedy@wustl.edu, or by visiting the Title IX office in Umrath Hall. Additionally, you can report incidents or complaints to the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards or by contacting WUPD at (314) 935-5555 or your local law enforcement agency. See: Title IX
You can also speak confidentially and learn more about available resources at the Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention Center by calling (314) 935-3445 for an appointment or visiting the 4th floor of Seigle Hall. See: RSVP Center
The University has a process through which students, faculty, staff and community members who have experienced or witnessed incidents of bias, prejudice or discrimination against a student can report their experiences to the University’s Bias Report and Support System (BRSS) team. See: brss.wustl.edu.
Mental Health Services’ professional staff members work with students to resolve personal and interpersonal difficulties, many of which can affect the academic experience. These include conflicts with or worry about friends or family, concerns about eating or drinking patterns, and feelings of anxiety and depression.
The Center of Diversity and Inclusion (CDI) supports and advocates for undergraduate, graduate, and professional school students from underrepresented and/or marginalized populations, creates collaborative partnerships with campus and community partners, and promotes dialogue and social change. One of the CDI's strategic priorities is to cultivate and foster a supportive campus climate for students of all backgrounds, cultures and identities. See: diversityinclusion.wustl.edu/