CS5350: Course Policies

Grading

Attendance and participation in the bi-weekly meetings will count for 25% of your grade. See below for details on participation.

Homework assignments will count for 30% of your grade. See below for details on homework submission.

All students will present at least one paper in class. The number of times you present will depend on the enrollment of the class and the number of topics we cover. All students will present a roughly equal number of times. Presentations will be worth 15% of your grade. See below for details on presentations.

The final 30% of your grade will be for a course project of your choosing. This will either be a written term paper or a significant coding project and corresponding documentation. You will also make a short presentation of this project in class (that will be graded pass/fail and will count for 5% of your project grade).

Participation

A large portion of your grade for this course will be for your participation in the course meetings. Come to every meeting prepared to ask relevant questions and to participate actively in discussion. Turn off the ringer on all cellphones. Do not text-message.

You must complete all assigned readings before the corresponding meeting. Come prepared to discuss the papers. Normally, this means you should bring a copy of each paper, either hardcopy or on a laptop or e-reader.

Contact the course staff if you are unable to come to any course meeting. If your reason is excusable (e.g. illness), your absence will not be counted against your grade for participation.

Presentations

Each time the class meets we will discuss one or more readings as listed on the schedule. Each reading will be presented by either one or two people. Thus, if there are 3 readings on the schedule for a given meeting, up to 6 people will present on that day, with up to two per reading.

To present a reading in this course means you will (1) give an overview of the contents of the reading in front of the class; (2) handle questions and lead subsequent discussion; and (3) generally make yourself an authority on all of the content of that reading. A key part of presenting is that you should highlight what you feel are the most important parts of the reading, which in many cases may not be the most complex parts.

Some of the readings will be presented by the professor, and some will be presented by students. We will do our best to evenly distribute the load so that all students present a roughly equal number of times. Once a reading has been assigned a presenter, that will be marked on the schedule. Until then it will be marked “Presenter TBD”.

If you would like to present a reading still marked TBD on the schedule, send the professor an email no later than noon 6 days in advance of the presentation. If you want to volunteer as a pair with someone else, then both of you must send separate emails stating that you want to present as a team with each other. Once you have been assigned to present you may also add a partner (by email from both of you) at any time prior to the meeting.

Presentation assignments will be communicated by email to the “winning” student(s) no later than 24 hours after the volunteer deadline. Any other volunteers for the same presentation will also be notified by email.

Assignments for presentations at meeting M will be made by the professor as follows: (a) let P be the minimum number of presentations given, or scheduled to be given, by any student prior to meeting M; (b) list all qualifying students (not just volunteers), defined as those who will have presented P times prior to meeting M; (c) if the result includes any volunteers, then remove all others; (d) pick the winner randomly from the list. (Any partner the winner may have specified is included by association, regardless of how many times they have presented.)

Note that this means that to qualify to present at a meeting you (or at least one person in a team) cannot have made more presentations than some other student before that meeting. Though this process may sound complex, it is designed to both fairly distribute the presentations and to allow students to present material they find most interesting. In some cases it will not be clear whether you will qualify at the time you volunteer, but it can never hurt to volunteer to present a paper you find interesting.

Each presenter will be assigned a grade of good, poor, or fail for each presentation. The default grade will be “good”. The only way to fail a presentation is to not show up (*). If you show up, but clearly seem to not have made a strong attempt to read and understand the material (you are always welcome to discuss any major questions you have with the professor before the meeting), then you will get a grade of “poor” for that presentation. For pair presentations each person will be assigned a separate grade; to avoid a “poor” you must participate actively and present a significant part of the material. At the end of the course, your overall presentation grade will be calculated numerically by taking the average of all your presentation grades, with good=100, poor=65, and fail=0.

(*) If you give valid excuse for missing an assigned presentation, such as a serious illness, then no grade will be recorded. The material will either be postponed until you are able to give the presentation or it will be presented by the professor or other students. You must still complete at least one reading presentation before the end of the term (reading presentations are separate from project presentations).

You may use any materials you like for your presentation. The professor will make a computer available that can at least project the reading you are presenting. If you have other electronic materials, such as powerpoint presentations, graphics, videos, scanned notes, or demonstration programs, either bring your own laptop (you may want to test for compatibility with the projector beforehand) and/or email the materials to the professor to be put on the provided computer.

The expected duration of each presentation will be defined by the professor when you “win” a presentation assignment, and will be proportional to the amount of content in the reading relative to other readings being presented that day. You should aim to present for approximately this amount of time, including discussion. If you run more than a few minutes over, you will have to stop so that the next presentation can begin (or so that the meeting can end).

Academic Honesty

The Northeastern University academic integrity policy applies to your work in this course.

You may work with other students on the homework assignments for this course:

For coding assignments, you must explicitly specify any “third-party” code that you use in a README file included with your submission. Third-party code includes, but is not limited to, source and/or binary code that you may have found on the internet, in a book or other printed reference (other than the course text), or from any other location. Digital content not created by yourself, including image (e.g. JPEG) and 3D model files (e.g. VRML), is also considered third-party code. These definitions also apply to third-party code which you have modified.

Homework Submission

Homeworks are due by 11:59pm on the day indicated on the assignment. The course schedule also lists due dates. In the unlikely event of a discrepancy between the due date specified on the assignment and that listed in the schedule or communicated by any other means, the date on the assignment takes precedence.

The mode of submission for each assignment will be specified as part of the assignment. For coding assignments you may be required to email a zipfile or tarball of your submission to the course staff. For written work either electronic or paper submission may be accepted.

You must always submit something by the due date. If what you have at that time is not yet complete, submit it anyway, and state clearly what you have and have not completed.

If you are unable to complete an assignment by the due date for a reason beyond your control (e.g. illness), you may request an extension. If such an extension is requested and granted prior to the original due date, the extended date will be treated as the due date for you.

If you submit an incomplete assignment, you may submit a revision or update at a later date, but no later than 1) the due date of the next assignment or 2) the last day of class, whichever comes first. Such late submissions may be eligible for partial credit at the discretion of the course staff on a case-by-case basis.