Grading
Since no TA has been asigned to this class by the end of the first week on classes, I have to assume that none
will be assigned; hence, the amount of work you are required to do in order to get
an A has been reduced accordingly.
The grade you earn in this class is based on the number of points you accumulate during the semester, between
mandatory -- such as midterm, final, and class presentation -- and optional assignments, such as homeworks,
programming assignments, extra credit, etc.
The purpose is to to give you flexibility in the way you manage your time and the kind of assignments you
want to work on. There are only two deadlines in this class, one for submitting work that's classified as
homeworks (2/22/11) and another one for work that's classified as programming assignments (4/5/11) -- and
that's only if you decide to submit additional work for this class.
You can submit all your homeworks at once or one per week, it's all up to you. You may even decide you don't
want to submit any homework and focus instead on programming assignments.
With great flexibility comes the danger that you won't be able to manage your time properly, and you'll
attempt to get everything done just before the deadlines, which is a sure recipe for disaster.
My recommendation is to start early and try to submit a piece of completed work every week.
The table below summarizes the nature of various assignments for this class.
The relationship between the number of points you accumulate in this class and your final grade is given
in the table below.
Class participation will help settle borderline grades. While class attendance is not taken, your
instructor believes that regular class attendance is important and expects students to actively
participate in class. Questions and comments are always welcome.
Late Work
All work that you turn in must be submitted on the Blackboard before
midnight (Central Time) the day the work is due.
I understand that from time to time you'll get overwhelmed with work, or that you may have personal
problems that will make you less productive than you'd like. That's why each student in this class
has a credit of 20 points for late work.
You can use this credit as you see fit, for good reason or no reason at all, all at once or
in pieces -- though there is no fractional credit, i.e. you cannot request 0.3 points of credit.
The only thing we ask for is that, in your Blackboard submission (in the COMMENT field) you
indicate how much of your credit you want to use.
After you've used your "late work credit", or if you don't want to use it, there is a 5% per
calendar day penalty for late work.
The way this works is that the late penalty is taken from the top, and then the TA applies other
penalties that result from grading the work.
Let's say you're N days late on an assignment that's worth X points; also, let's also assume
that the TA finds errors in your submission that accumulate to a total of Y points. Then, your mark
for the said work is going to be (X - N*0.05*X) - Y.
For example, let's assume we're talking about PA-2 where you can earn a maximum of 70 points (X=70), and that you're
three days late (N=3). Let's also assume that the TA deems the errors in your submission accumulate to 11 points.
Then, your mark on this assignment will be (70 - 3*0.05*70) - 11 = 48.5, which will be
rounded up -- using the round half up rule -- to 49.
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Academic Honesty
All the work you submit must be individual, including, but not limited to, those cases when your instructor has
approved pair-programming for you; in these cases the only thing that may be identical with somebody else's is code.
Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. IIT has a strict academic honesty policy; here are the top points:
-
The misrepresentation of any work submitted for credit as the product of a student’s sole
independent effort, such as using the ideas of others without attribution and other forms of plagiarism.
-
The use of any unauthorized assistance in taking quizzes, tests or examinations.
-
The acquisition, without permission, of tests, answer sheets, problem solutions or other
academic material when such material has been withheld from distribution by the instructor.
-
Deliberate harmful obstruction of the studies, research or academic work of any member of
the IIT community.
-
Making material misrepresentation in any submission to or through any office of the university to a
potential employer, professional society, meeting or organization.
-
The intentional assistance of others in the violation of the standards for academic honest.
You can read the entire policy at
http://www.iit.edu/student_affairs/handbook/information_and_regulations/code_of_academic_honesty.shtml.
You should read it until you fully understand it.
A good way to test whether you understand it is to try to explain it to somebody else.
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Programming Assignments
Programming assignments are designed to improve your understanding of core concepts by implementing them.
Feel free to use your favorite programming language or use this as an opportunity
to learn new ones.
All programming work you do for this class will be tested on one of two environments
-
Our computer running a fresh instalation of Ubuntu 10.04.
This is the preferred environment.
-
Our computer running Windows XP, SP3.
NOTE: the fact that your code runs on your computer and not on ours is not enough to earn you credit for your work.
We'd love to accomodate you with other test environments, however the TA is already overworked, which means we're
not going to do it.
Let me repeat, we're not going to test under any other version of Windows, nor are we going to do it under and other
Unix variant other than the one described above.
If your application requires things (e.g. libraries, plug-ins, gems, etc.) that dont's come with
the standard distribution, then you should tell us, in the README file you provide with your other
deliverables, how to install required dependencies.
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Class Presentations
The purpose of this section is for students to do some independent research work and present their findings to the
class.
No later than 2/15/11, each student must choose a topic for the class presentation. Your topic must be
approved by your instructor.
Submit your request via email to your class instructor. Topic requests will be honored on a FIFO basis.
As a general rule, the sooner you submit the request, the more time you'll have to prepare it.
A draft of the presentation is due (on the Blackboard) on 3/15/11; a penalty of 5% will be assigned
if you fail to submit your draft presentation or if you submit it late. There are two purposes to this:
- Make sure you're on track with your work.
- Select the most promising presentations for live presentations; that's primarily of concern for your teacher.
Again, should you fail to deliver a draft of your presentation by the due date, you'll get penalized 5% in your
presentation score.
The draft presentation must be substantive, i.e. it should show you've spent enough time
researching the presentation topic in order to have a good idea about what needs to go in and what
needs to stay out. If the draft presentation is deemed to not be substantive by your instructor,
then you'll get a 5% penalty on your presentation.
You must submit your final presentation on the Blackboard. The presentation must include notes
for each slide, which notes include the detail related to each slide; if you prefer, you can
produce a separate document that includes the detail of your presentation. If the notes you
provide for your presentation are deemed to not be substantive by your instructor, then you'll
get a 10% penalty on your presentation.
Allocate significant time to survey the IS topic you have selected. Do not wait until a few days before the
presentation is due, chances are that if you do so, then you'll run out of time and will end up with a very
poor mark in this section.
Presentations will be limited to 20' and will be followed by Q&A up to a total of 30'.
Grading will consider both the content and the way the presentation is made to the class.
Your class peers will participate in the grading process and their opinion accounts for 40%
of your mark, unless you are one of the students who submits the topic late and/or you cannot
be physically present in class for a live presentation.
If you are a student whose presentation hasn't been selected for one of the live presentations sessions or a
student who takes the class remotely and cannot attend a live presentation, then you will have to record your
presentation as if you were giving it in front of your peers and turn in a .mpeg movie together with all the
other deliverables for the class presentation. Your presentation is due on the first day of student
presentations as outlined in the Class Schedule.
In the movie we'll want to see:
- Your face, at least in the beginning and at the end of the presentation
- Slides
- Synchronized sound
The presentation must be very well rehearsed; failure to properly prepare for the presentation will
result in an extremely poor mark on the presentation.
The following grading sheets will be used for your class presentation.
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