(Last Mod: 17 December 2013 13:16:34 )
The following are generic course policies that apply to all courses that I teach. Individual courses may have policies that override some of these and, if so, will be noted or linked to on that course's homepage.
Except as required by higher authority (department, college, or school), attendance will not be tracked nor will it affect your grade directly. Students are deemed to be adults with the ability to make decisions and accept the consequences of those decisions. It is fully recognized that students have many demands on their time and that choices have to be made as to what constitutes the most effective use that time. One side effect of not tracking attendance comes into play when, under some circumstances, a last date of attendance must be reported to the school; the date reported will then usually be the due date of the last assignment (or exam) submitted by the student.
Homework and projects will receive a grade consisting of two parts. The first part, worth 25% of the total points, is based on the fraction of the assignment that was completed with a "good faith" effort without regard to correctness. The remaining part, worth 75% of the total points, is based on the quality and correctness of the submitted work.
Homework and projects are either submitted electronically or via hardcopy (the assignment will indicated which). Electronic submissions are due before 8am on the assigned due date and are to be uploaded via Blackboard or, if Blackboard is not available, e-mailed to the instructor. Hardcopy submissions are due at the beginning of the class on the due date. Hardcopy submissions ARE NOT to be turned into the EECS Department Office (BB-W350) unless prearranged with the instructor.
Assignments are to be submitted on time. Late submissions will not be accepted for a grade since, among other things, the goal is to post solutions very soon (within minutes, when possible) after the submission deadline.
Most courses are laid out using a 1000 pt template with 60% of the total points allocated to homework and/or projects, 20% allocated to in-class hour exams (one or two), and 20% allocated to the final exam. Depending on the pacing of the course, not all of the homework/project points may be available -- for instance, if the course just does get far enough to justify assigning the last homework assignment. In this case, the total points available in each category will normally be weighted to maintain the 60/20/20 relative weighting.
| Item | Points |
| Homework | 600 |
| Hour Exams | 200 |
| Final Exam | 200 |
| TOTAL | 1000 |
Some assignments, including exams, may have extra credit points available. Typically the total extra credit points available will be approximately 3% of the total course points. These points will be tracked separately, giving each student a "base point total" (without extra credit points) and a "final point total" (with extra credit). At the end of the semester, the final course grade breaks will be established based on the distribution of base points, but each student's final course grade will be based on their total points.
The final grades will nominally be based on the following grade breaks. The actual breaks of some or all grades may be moved downward to reflect overall distribution of the base point totals and to recognize natural gaps within that distribution. Because of the availability of extra credit points, no adjustment of a student's grade will occur in cases where their final total points fails to make a grade cut no matter how close the total is to the cut for the next higher grade. The rationale for this is simple -- either the student's base point total was close enough to the cut that the student could have made it over the cut had they taken fuller advantage of the available extra credit points, or their base point total was too far away from the cut for the student to overcome the deficit with the available extra credit.
| Grade | At Least | Less Than |
| A | 90 | N/A |
| A- | 88 | 90 |
| B+ | 86 | 88 |
| B | 81 | 86 |
| B- | 79 | 81 |
| C+ | 77 | 79 |
| C | 72 | 77 |
| C- | 70 | 72 |
| D+ | 68 | 70 |
| D | 63 | 68 |
| D- | 60 | 63 |
| F | N/A | 60 |
In an ideal world, a student's grade in a course would be based on the knowledge and skills they have at the completion of the course and it would not matter if that knowledge was gained gradually over the period of the course or was the result of furious study at the end of the course. But for this to work, a final assessment would have to be used that was truly comprehensive, both in breadth and depth. Such an assessment would require much more than the two hours available for the final exam. Thus, the following compromise is in place. The Safe Harbor and Deep Water rules basically say that a student's demonstrated knowledge and skills at the end of the course should establish bounds, both upper and lower, on what their final course grade will be. The Safe Harbor rule says that your final course grade will be no lower than you final exam score less the point criterion while the Deep Water rule says that your final course grade will be no higher than your final exam score plus that same point criterion. The more comprehensive the final exam, the smaller the criterion and, thus, the tighter these bounds. For most courses, a fifteen percentage point criterion is used;
This is best illustrated with a couple of examples. Let's assume that the grade break points are not being curved. Say Alice really struggled in the early part of the course and did horribly on the hour exams, but she put in a lot of effort in the latter part of the course and overcame her deficiencies. In the end, her final point total came to 57% (i.e., an F) but here final exam score was 95%. The Safe Harbor rule would place a floor on her grade of 80%.and she would receive a B- in the course. Bob, on the other hand, did well enough in the early part of the course and on the hour exams such that his final point total came to 84% (i.e., a B), but he got distracted and didn't put in the effort to bring everything together in the end and got a 61% on the final exam. The Deep Water rule would cap his final course grade at 76% and he would receive a C in the course.
It is worthwhile noting the two extreme cases. Someone that earns a 100% on the final exam essentially guarantees themselves a final course grade of a B even if they didn't turn in a single thing during the rest of the course. On the other hand, a student that scores below a 45% on the final exam essentially guarantees a failing grade in the course regardless of their performance on their earlier performance.
Perhaps the most important thing to know about the Safe Harbor and Deep Water rules is that they affect very few students. The most common invocation, typically impacting one or two students per course, of the Safe Harbor rules involves a student slightly raising their grade, generally from an F to some kind of D. The Deep Water rule is almost never involved and, when it is, usually involves a student with a with an already very low grade (some type of D) receiving an F because of extremely poor performance on the final. For the overwhelming majority of students, their final exam score and their final point totals are sufficiently in agreement that no adjustment is made.
Students are encouraged to assist each other in learning the material covered in the course, including the concepts involved in working the assigned problems; however, all work submitted for grading is expected to be the sole work of the student making the submission. A simple way to navigate this distinction is to use an "empty hands" policy when discussing assignments with other students, meaning that the student should walk away from any discussion with "empty hands" and only take with them the knowledge gained from the discussion. A similar approach would be to rework any problem on which any assistance was received from scratch, without any assistance, and to turn in the reworked problem for grading.
Students submitting work that, in part or in whole, is not their own face severe penalties. While these penalties will be assessed on a case-by-case basis, a typical penalty for a first offense is to receive a negative score equal to one-half of the total points of the assignment. Thus, if an assignment consisted of five ten-point problems and the student cheated on one problem, the total assignment would receive a score of -25pts, regardless of whether cheating was evident on the other four problems. The rationale for this is two-fold -- first, cheating on one problem results in the forfeiture of any presumption of non-cheating on the remaining problems and, second, a student that turns in an assignment on which they cheated deserves significantly less credit than a student that receives a zero by honestly not turning in any assignment at all. The penalty for a second offense will normally be an F in the course and a referral, via appropriate channels, to the Dean of Students for academic dishonesty.