Grading
Since no TA has been assigned to this class by the beginning of school, it is somewhat
reasonable 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 (2/18) and another one for work that's
classified as programming assignments (4/1) -- 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 -- or whoever grades your work -- 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 finds
errors in your submission that are worth 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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Exams
Exams are open-book(s), open-notes. You may bring with you any notes you want, however
you may not share them with anybody else during the exam.
During the exam the use of communication devices such as phones, laptops, etc. is permitted,
however, we'll ask you to be disconnected from the network (any network). You may also bring
with you a calculator.
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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 installation of Ubuntu 13.10.
This is the preferred environment.
-
Our computer running Windows 7 Professional.
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 accommodate you with other test environments, however the TA -- assuming one is even assigned
to this class -- 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 don't
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 2/11, 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.
An outline of your class presentation is due (on the Blackboard) no later than 3/11;
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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