Yes, this page is long, but it is important to read it in its entirety, otherwise you might act against course policies, which could have serious consequences.
Please come to lectures; you'll learn something.
Please come to, and participate in, your assigned precept; it's the best way to be prepared for the assignments. (Also, it's the primary component of your participation grade.)
Use Ed Discussion to get answers to your questions and help answer others' questions, but you may not reveal anything about your assignment solutions there.
You may e-mail your own preceptor with questions that are not appropriate for Ed. See Electronic Communication for more.
Do not plagiarize assignment solutions! We (and the University) take this very seriously. Please read the policy on Assignment Conduct carefully, but, in short, when doing assignments, use only authorized sources of information: course instructors, Intro Lab TAs in the Intro COS Lab, course texts and handouts; always acknowledge all your sources.
We encourage you to listen attentively to the lectures, but also participate actively by asking helpful questions occasionally, answering questions occasionally, and so forth. Your lecture attendance and participation are important to your success in the course and to the success of the course as a whole. Lecture participation may be partially measured using responses to iClicker questions. You must only submit your own iClicker responses — it is a violation of course policy to submit for someone else's iClicker, or to ask someone to answer questions using your iClicker.
Some of the material covered in lectures is not covered in the textbooks or precepts. Some exam questions may reward your lecture attendance.
We urge you to attend the precepts! We also encourage you to engage actively in the precepts by listening attentively and expressively, asking helpful questions occasionally, answering questions occasionally, actively participating in group activities, and so forth. Your precept attendance and participation are important to your success in the course. They also are important to the success of the course as a whole, and so will be significant components of your participation grade.
Some of the material covered in precepts is not covered in the textbooks or lectures.
You should attend your precept, that is, the precept for which you are registered in Princeton's TigerHub system.
Generally it is not acceptable to attend another precept instead of your precept consistently. Your participation grade will suffer if you do not participate in your precept. However, it is acceptable to attend another precept instead of your precept occasionally if a conflict with your precept arises. (Indeed you should do so.) In that case, as soon as you become aware of the conflict, send e-mail to your preceptor and the other preceptor. The other preceptor thereby will know to duplicate handouts for you, make sure you have a seat, etc. Note that this mechanism is intended to address occasional conflicts; it does not provide license to attend precepts other than your precept on a regular basis.
Generally it is not acceptable to attend another precept in addition to your precept consistently. After all, if even a small fraction of the course's students did that routinely, then some precepts would be very large (or even overflow) routinely. Precepts containing a large number of students are less effective than those containing a small number. However, it could be acceptable to attend another precept in addition to your own occasionally. In that case, send e-mail to your preceptor and the other preceptor the day before the precept, asking permission to attend. The preceptors then will make the decision.
These are the course's policies concerning electronic communication:
If you have a question that you can express without revealing any of your assignment solution, then you may post it in a public post on the course's Ed Discussion forum. One of the course's instructors will respond as soon as possible. Other students also are welcome to respond if they can do so without revealing any of their assignment solutions either.
If you have a question that you cannot express without revealing any of your assignment solution, then you may post a private post on Ed. You should not, however, post your code to Ed. Instead, submit it on armlab, so that whichever instructor answers the post may reference it.
If your preceptor does not answer your e-mailed question in a reasonable amount of time, then as a last-choice option you may e-mail your question to all of the course's instructors at cos217instructors@lists.cs.princeton.edu. Any e-mail sent to that address will be received only by the course staff, not by students enrolled in the course. One of the course's instructors will answer your question as soon as possible. You may not e-mail questions directly to a preceptor other than your own.
In the context of electronic communication, the phrase "any of your assignment solution" includes:
The products that you create for the assignment, that is, your source code files (including comments), DFA files, Makefiles, readme files, etc. You may not show any of the products that you create for the assignment, modified versions of them, or any parts of them, on Ed.
Descriptions of those products in the form of pseudo-code, flow charts, outlines, diagrams, natural language prose, etc. You may not describe the products that you create for the assignment, or any parts of them, on Ed.
Design decisions that you make in the process of creating those products, that is, your decisions about how to express your program as files, your files as functions, your functions as statements, etc. You may not describe your design decisions or suggest design decisions on Ed.
The policies described in this section supplement University academic regulations. This course has course policies that go beyond University policies on academic conduct. Princeton's Rights, Rules, Responsibilities handbook asserts:
The only adequate defense for a student accused of an academic violation is that the work in question does not, in fact, constitute a violation. Neither the defense that the student was ignorant of the regulations concerning academic violations nor the defense that the student was under pressure at the time the violation was committed is considered an adequate defense.
If the course staff suspects that you have violated course policies concerning assignment conduct, then the course staff will investigate, make an appropriate determination, and apply a penalty. The default penalty is a 0 grade for the assignment on which the violation took place, but the course's instructor of record may adjust this penalty to as little as 0 credit for the portion on which the violation took place, or to as much as an F in the course for a particularly severe violation. Additionally, if the course staff determines that you may have violated University policies, you will also be referred to the Committee on Discipline or other relevant body. These bodies may impose additional penalties. Note that it is possible to violate the course policy without violating University policies. In those cases, the ruling on University policy does not override any penalty for the course policy violation.
This course takes policy violations seriously, and so does the University. According to the University's Rights, Rules, Responsibilities, plagiarism can occur when as little as "even one phrase" is used without citation (see the ODOC Academic Integrity page for more).
If you have any questions about these matters, please consult a course staff member.
In short: To help you compose an assignment solution you may use only the authorized sources of information that are listed below, may consult with other people only via the course's Ed forum or via interactions that might legitimately (see explanation below) appear on the course's Ed forum, and must declare your sources in your readme file for the assignment. Using impermissible sources is a violation of course policy. Failure to cite sources is also a violation of University policy. While citing an impermissible source may avert plagiarism, it does not avoid the restrictions imposed by course policy.
To help you compose your assignment solutions you may use:
The course's lectures.
The course's precepts.
The course's website.
Documents that are referenced directly by the course's website. Such documents include the course's lecture slides and precept handouts.
The course's textbooks and reference manuals.
The man pages on the armlab cluster.
The course's current staff members outside of class time through office hours.
The course's current staff members outside of class time through meetings.
The course's current staff members outside of class time through Ed.
The course's current staff members outside of class time through e-mail.
Current Intro Lab TAs through visits to the Intro COS Lab.
To help you compose your assignment solutions you may use only the sources of information listed above. For example, you may not use:
Anyone other than current course staff members or current Intro Lab TAs.
Any student who currently is taking the course or who took the course in a prior semester, in any form (verbally, computer files, e-mail messages, pencil/pen on paper, marker on white board, chalk on black board, etc.) at any level of detail (code, pseudo-code, flow charts, outlines, diagrams, natural language prose, etc.) at any time (before or while working on your assignment solution).
Assignment solutions (regardless of completeness or correctness) provided by any student who currently is taking the course, provided by any student who took the course in a prior semester, or retrieved from the web. Even glancing momentarily at an assignment solution other than your own — beyond the period of time required to recognize that it is related to the assignment — is a violation of course policies.
GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, or any other similar tool or source.
There are three exceptions to those policies:
You may consult with students who currently are taking the course via the course's Ed forum. The section of this web page entitled "Electronic Communication" provides details concerning the proper use of the course's Ed forum.
You may consult with other students who are taking the course if and only if your interactions might legitimately appear on the course's Ed forum. The word "legitimately" here should be taken to mean that your help is qualitatively and quantitatively similar to messages that have remained posted to Ed. Occasionally, students will post impermissible questions, comments, or responses on Ed, and the course staff will delete these. Only the posts that remain should be taken as guidelines when providing help to another student. When in doubt, for your sake and the sake of the other student, use Ed.
You may consult with other people (former COS 217 students, friends and family who have not taken COS 217, etc.) if and only if your interactions might legitimately appear on the course's Ed forum, using the same explanation of "legitimate" as given above. In that case it is your responsibility to make sure the person who is helping you knows the pertinent course policies and does not violate them. When in doubt, simply don't consult with other people.
Examining and/or copying someone else's code is an egregious violation of course policies and perhaps University policy. Copying and transforming someone else's code (by rearranging independent code, renaming variables, rewording comments, etc.) is just as egregious (and perhaps moreso, because it displays intent to deceive). Some inexperienced programmers have the misconception that detecting such violations is difficult; actually it is quite easy. Not only do such violations quickly identify themselves during the grading process, but also we can (and do) use software packages, such as Alex Aiken's renowned MOSS software, for automated help.
There is one exception to that code-copying-and-transforming policy. You may adapt code from the course materials provided that you explain what code you use, and cite its source in your readme file.
For each assignment you must declare, in your readme file, the authorized sources of information that you used to compose your assignment solution. In most cases, the general category of source is acceptable: you do not have to specify which textbook or precept handout you used; which preceptor or LabTA you talked with, which Ed posts you read, etc. However, for the latter two of the "three exceptions to those policies" listed above, you do have to specify the identities of the individuals, whether current COS 217 students or others outside the class, with whom you consulted.
For each assignment you also must declare in your readme file the unauthorized sources of information and help that you used to compose your assignment solution and explain in detail any violation of course policy and University policy. The penalty for course policy violations will depend on the level of severity and the level of clarity in these explanations. Declaring that "(So-and-so) offered a key insight about the challenge portion" is less severe than "I copied the foo function verbatim from (So-and-so)" which is likewise less severe than "I copied the majority of this assignment from (Some URL)". Declarations such as "I got help from a friend" are less clear and detailed than the previous examples, to the extent that they may not even constitute a viable source citation, risking rising to a violation of both course and University policies.
In short: You may help other students with assignments only via the course's Ed forum or interactions that might legitimately appear on the course's Ed forum, and you may not share your assignment solutions with anyone in the course, ever, in any form.
You may not provide any portion of your assignment solutions to help to another student in any form (verbally, computer files, e-mail messages, pencil/pen on paper, marker on white board, chalk on black board, etc.) at any level of detail (code, pseudo-code, flow charts, outlines, diagrams, natural language prose, etc.) at any time (before or while the student works on the assignment solution). That policy holds even after the due date/time of the assignment in any given semester, and even after the course is finished. That is, you may not use your solutions to provide assignment-related help to students who take the course in future semesters.
There are five exceptions to those policies:
While you are taking the course, you may provide assignment-related help to other current students via the course's Ed forum. The section of this web page entitled "Electronic Communication" provides details concerning the proper use of the course's Ed forum.
While you are taking the course, you may provide assignment-related help to current students if and only if your interactions might legitimately appear on the course's Ed forum. When in doubt, for your sake and the sake of the other student, insist on using Ed.
After completing the course, you may provide assignment-related help to current students if and only if your interactions might legitimately appear on the course's Ed forum using the explanation of "legitimately" provided above. You must refrain from consulting your own solutions while helping others, and when in doubt, for your sake and the sake of the other student, defer them to the course staff.
After completing the course, if acting officially as an Intro Lab TA, undergraduate course assistant, residential college tutor, or member of the course staff, you may provide help to current students to the extent that, and with the restrictions that, those roles allow. As Lab TA policy, you should refrain from consulting your own solutions while helping others.
After completing the course, if using your assignment solutions as part of a portfolio, you may add interviewers or similar parties to your repository as collaborators so that they may view your code. The repositories must still remain private to arbitrary GitHub users, however, to shield them from current students.
Sharing your assignment-related code/comments with another student is an especially egregious violation of course policies. Sharing your code/comments in digital form is even more egregious. Do not give hard copy of your work to anyone. Do not e-mail your work to anyone. Do not make your work available to anyone via the web.
Any source code repositories containing your work should be configured to be private, with no additional collaborators (with the exception of a partner for partnered assignments detailed below). When you pull a local working copy of a repository onto the armlab cluster (or any shared computing environment), use the filesystem's permissions to make your files private. You can create a private directory in the CS armlab filesystem by issuing commands similar to these in a shell logged into that cluster:
mkdir cos217
chmod 700 cos217
Similarly, you should ensure security of your personal computer, external hard drive or flash drive containing your work, etc. with a password and enable password protection whenever you leave it unattended.
Remember that you are responsible for keeping your assignment-related work away from prying eyes. If someone else copies your work, we have no way of knowing the circumstances. In that case we will refer the matter to the Committee on Discipline, and the Committee will investigate.
If you took COS 217 (or part of it) during a previous semester, then you may use your work on assignments from that previous semester. However you may not use:
Feedback that your grader gave you on your work on assignments from a previous semester. For example, you may not look at your old grade reports or codePost annotations.
Your work on an assignment from a previous semester if you worked with a partner on that assignment during the previous semester.
Your work on an assignment from a previous semester if you are working with a partner on that assignment during this semester.
Your work on an assignment from a previous semester if you violated course policies or University policies on that assignment, as determined by the course's instructors or the Committee on Discipline.
Some of the assignments will allow you to work with 1 partner. You may choose to work alone on some or all of the partnered assignments (though we don't recommend it), to work with the same partner on multiple assignments, or to switch partners between assignments, as you see fit.
Only one partner should submit the final version of the
assignment. If the other partner has submitted along the way before
the final version, that partner must retract those submited files
using the unsubmit command. Failing to do so may waste
grader time and resources and incur a penalty.
You must "declare" your partnership upon submission. To do so, as part of your final submission create and submit a ".partner" file named with the pattern NETID.partner (where NETID is the armlab login of the partner who is not issuing the submit command). Thus, if you are submitting assignment X for you and your partner joestu, joestu would issue no submit commands and you would issue these commands in addition to the other file submissions:
touch joestu.partner
submit X joestu.partner
Please be sure the file has the .partner extension (that's how we recognize it) and that you have used your partner's actual netid (don't submit, literally, netid.partner nor a .partner file with your partner's email alias instead of their netid).
Both partners for an assignment will receive the same grade on that assignment. Following from this, both partners must use the same number of late days. (See the full lateness policy below.)
As far as fairness and joint effort are concerned, the overarching principle is that each partner is responsible for equally sharing in all elements of the assignment. This precludes "divide and conquer" approaches to the assignment. It also requires introspection to prevent a situation in which you are "carrying" your partner or allowing yourself to be "carried".
We believe that the COS 126 partner collaboration policy is a good guideline with lots of good advice. COS 217 allows more leeway in terms of making progress without both partners being present, however, so long as the above principle holds. One example that we will permit that the COS 126 policy may not have allowed is working on the assignment in office hours that only one partner can attend. (Though we do encourage you to find an office hour session you both can attend!)
Conduct during exams is covered by the University Honor Code. If we suspect a student of inappropriate conduct during either the midterm or final exam, then we will refer the case to the Honor Committee (for in-person exams) or Committee on Discipline (for remotely administered exams). If the appropriate Committee finds the student guilty of inappropriate conduct, then the standard course penalty is automatic failure of COS 217, but the course's instructor of record may adjust this penalty to as little as 0 credit for the portion of the exam on which the violation took place. The presiding Committee may impose additional penalties.
You should submit your work on an assignment before its due time. If an assignment consists of multiple files, then we will consider the date-time of submission of your work as a whole to be the same as the date-time of submission of the last file that you submit.
If you will be submitting after the deadline, you must submit a file named notdone for the assignment to indicate that your work is incomplete. You can create such a file and submit it for assignment X with these commands:
touch notdone
submit X notdone
If the deadline has passed and this file is not submitted, we may grade any submitted work as-is. When you have finalized your work, you must retract the notdone file. We may not grade your submission until you have done this. You can do so with the command: unsubmit X notdone
For partnered assignments, only one partner should submit
the notdone file, but the submitting partner should
submit the partner declaration file (the one named with the pattern
NETID.partner described above) at
the same time as the notdone file. This way, we know
the other partner is also accounted for.
Late assignments are assessed a penalty equal to 10% of the possible points on the assignment per day (or partial day) late. The penalties for your first four late days are waived automatically. Additional late penalties will be waived only in the case of unforeseeable circumstances, documented by your Dean or Assistant Dean for Studies. In these cases, you should discuss the matter with your preceptor as soon as possible. Please plan your work on the assignments so that travel, religious holidays, conflicting deadlines for other classes, etc. do not cause you to submit late.
Some of the assignments involve partnering with another student. For these assignments, the penalty will be applied equally to both partners. The number of free late days a partnership can use is the minimum of the number of free late days each partner has remaining. (A partner with more late days available would retain the excess for future assignments, if any, with a different partner or alone.)
You may not submit your work on any assignment after 4:59PM on Dean's Date without getting explicit permission as specified by University policies — typically from the appropriate Dean and the COS 217 instructor-of-record.
For most assignments, your feedback and grade will be released to you before the subsequent assignment is due, so that you can integrate any relevant feedback into your solutions to that next assignment. If you have questions about how your assignment has been graded, we encourage you to ask your preceptor in office hours or via email. If you believe that your assignment has been graded incorrectly, you must submit a brief regrade request on codePost. This must be done before the subsequent assignment's feedback and grade is released, with the exception of the last two assignments, whose deadlines will be specified when they are released.
Exam solutions will be released once all students have taken the exam. Exam grades will be released once all exams have been graded. The deadline and procedure for regrade requests will be specified when the exam results are released, as these may depend on whether the exam was graded on paper or online and the timing for this semester.
Your final grade will be weighted as follows:
Component Approximate Weight Assignments 55% Midterm Exam 15% Final Exam 25% Participation 5%
To determine your participation grade we will consider the extent to which your involvement in the course positively affected the course as a whole. Did you attend and participate actively in class meetings? Did you participate effectively on Ed by asking helpful questions or providing helpful answers? If you can answer "yes" to those questions, then you have made the course a better experience for other students, for the instructors, and for yourself.
Conversely, we also will consider the extent to which your involvement in the course negatively affected the course as a whole. Did you miss class meetings frequently? Did you attend the wrong precept (without prior approval) frequently? Were you often distracted during meetings, or were you a source of distraction for others? Did you frequently send messages to Ed that are inappropriate, asking questions that were answered previously on Ed, or asking questions that are covered plainly in the readings? If you must answer "yes" to any of those questions, then you have negatively affected the course for all concerned.
The only person who can grant deviations from the above-stated policies is the COS 217 course's instructor-of-record, and such waivers will only be granted via e-mail or written communication. No other waiver from other sources can modify these policies. It is the student's responsibility to adhere to the policies, and to ignore any implied or explicit waiver from any unauthorized source. For example, if the student asks a preceptor, Intro Lab TA, Dean, or friend if something is permissible, any response that deviates from course policy cannot be used to justify any action that is contrary to course policy.