| 10% | Lab Exercises and Written Assignments |
| 30% | Programming Projects (~6) |
| 25% | 2 Tests |
| 30% | Final exam |
| 5% | Class participation and Attendance |
The tentative dates are already on the schedule, but we will discuss the exact time about a week and a half before the test. The questions for the test will be posted at the announced time and you will have 24 hours to submit your answers. If you are unavailable during the day of the test, contact the instructor as soon as possible to make accommodations.
There will be two tests throughout the semester, the first one will be worth 10%, the second, 15%.
The main goal of the tests, other than assessing your understanding of the material is to give you feedback on your current understanding of the material. If, after receiving the feedback, you adjust and fill any previous gaps in your understanding before the final exam, then, as far as I am concerned, the test fulfilled its purpose and the final exam grade is the one that should hold. Therefore, if you get a higher grade on the final exam than you did on a test, then the grade of the test will be replace by a mix of the test grade and the final exam grade.
The lab exercises will usually be posted on Wednesday between 3:00pm and 3:30pm and you will have until Thursday 11:59pm to submit your answers or programs.
You do not have to complete all the exercises. I only ask that you seriously work on the exercises for about two hours (the duration of the lab) and then you can submit what you have. Any submission that represents a serious two hours of work will awarded full marks. I will also accept late lab submissions, but there will be a late penalty if there is no serious reason for the lateness.
If for any reason you are unavailable during the normal time for the lab, you can just submit your answers or programs, so attencance to the labs is not absolutely necessary, but I strongly recommend that you come to lab if you are at the college, or at least connect to the remote lab session if you can because I will be available during that time to answser any questions you have during that time.
Programming assignments are submitted electronically using onCourse, and are typically due by 11:59 PM. You may submit your assignment multiple times, but only the final submission will be graded.
The first few labs will be individual assignments to ensure that everyone knows the basics of C++ and the course material. Later, we may transition to partnered lab assignments to allow you to work on larger projects and to gain important experience working in groups to build software.
Late Policy: Programming assignments will typically be assigned Wednesday afternoon during lab and will be due at 11:59PM on the day indicated on the assignment. You are strongly encouraged to start early and to attend the tutoring sessions for extra practice. You must submit your assignments electronically by submitting to your files on onCourse. You may submit your assignment multiple times, only the final submission will be graded.
To help with cases of minor illnesses, athletic conflicts, or other short-term time limitations, all students start the course with three late assignment days to be used at your discretion, with no questions asked. To use your extra time, you must email your professor after you have completed the lab and attach your programming assignment to the email. You do not need to inform anyone ahead of time. When you use late time, you should still expect to work on the newly-released lab during the following lab section meeting. The professor and tutors will always prioritize answering questions related to the current lab assignment.
Your late days will be counted at the granularity of full days and will be tracked on a per-student (NOT per-partnership) basis. That is, if you turn in an assignment five minutes after the deadline, it counts as using one day. For partnered labs, using a late day counts towards the late days for each partner. In the rare cases in which only one partner has unused late days, that partner's late days may be used, barring a consistent pattern of abuse.
If you feel that you need an extension on an assignment or that you are unable to attend class for two or more meetings due to a medical condition (e.g., extended illness, concussion, hospitalization) or other emergency, you must contact the dean's office and your instructors. Faculty will coordinate with the deans to determine and provide the appropriate accommodations. Note that for illnesses, the College's medical excuse policy, states that you must be seen and diagnosed by the Student Health Center and get a note justifying your absence or inability to complete your work in time.
Academic honesty is required in all your work. Under no circumstances may you hand in work done with (or by) someone else under your own name. Your code should never be shared with anyone; you may not examine or use code belonging to someone else, nor may you let anyone else look at or make a copy of your code. This includes, but is not limited to, obtaining solutions from students who previously took the course or code that can be found online. You may not share solutions after the due date of the assignment.
Discussing ideas and approaches to problems with others on a general level is fine (in fact, we encourage you to discuss general strategies with each other), but you should never read anyone else's code or let anyone else read your code. All code you submit must be your own with the following permissible exceptions: code distributed in class, code found in the course text book, and code worked on with an assigned partner. In these cases, you should always include detailed comments that indicates on which parts of the assignment you received help, and what your sources were.
Failure to abide by these rules constitutes a violation of the Wheaton Honor Code and will be referred to the Dean of Students Office for disciplinary action. In extreme cases involving copyrighted materials, prosecution under State and Federal laws may also apply.
I will routinely run plagiarism detection software on your lab assignment submissions.
The spirit of this policy applies to all course work, including code, homework solutions (e.g., proofs, analysis, written reports), and exams. Please contact me if you have any questions about what is permissible in this course.