CMSC-341, Spring 1999, Sections 101 and 201

Project Policy

Grading Policy:

Projects will be graded on five criteria: correctness, design, style, documentation, and efficiency. This means that turning in a project that "works" but is poorly organized and documented will not receive full credit.
You should submit your projects even if you have not completed the work.

  1. A project that runs incorrectly will lose up to 25 points.
  2. A project that does not compile will lose 50 points. Of course, this applies only if you have made a good-faith effort. Trivial submittals will receive no credit.
  3. Poorly documented projects (see the Project Organization handout) will lose up to 25 points.
  4. Well-designed classes, well-chosen data structures, good file partitioning, and the use of efficient algorithms are important grading criteria. Failure to meet these criteria can result in loss of up to 50 points.

Due Date:

Every project will have a due date. You should budget your time to complete your project and submit it by midnight of that date. Since you can submit material multiple times, we use the time of your most recent submittal.

If you turn in your project late, you will be penalized as follows:

Days Late
Penalty
1 10%
2 20%
3 40%
4 80%

Projects more than 4 days late will not be accepted. For example, if a project is due on Monday, you will receive an 80% penalty if you turn it in on Friday. After Friday, your project grade will be zero.

Cheating:

Cheating in any form will not be tolerated. Instances of cheating will be reported to the UMBC Academic Conduct Committee. These reports are filed by the Committee and can be used for disciplinary action such as a permanent record on your transcript. Academic honesty is absolutely required of you. You are expected to be honest yourself and to report any cases of dishonesty you see among other students in this class. Reports of dishonest behavior will be kept anonymous.

If you ever have a question about cheating in this course, please ask the instructor about it. Ignorance about the cheating policy is not a defense after the fact.

Your project assignments are to be entirely your own. You may discuss general course ideas with others, but everything you submit must be just your own work.

It is never permitted to copy code from someone else nor to provide code to someone else. This applies to paper and electronic forms of the code.

Here is a general rule for you to follow:

Having someone else's work in your possession, even briefly, is dishonest
Help received from the CSHC, TA, or instructor may be included in your submittals.

You must protect your materials from observation by others. It is your responsibility to maintain your course files so they cannot be read by others. Failure to protect your course files will be considered to be a form of academic dishonesty. In particular, do not store your files in a publicly-accessible directory. If your materials are copied by another person because you failed to protect them, you will be subject to the same disciplinary action as the other person. If in doubt about how to protect your files, ask for help in a UCS lab, at the CSHC, or from the TA or instructor.

We will be using special software to check for cheating. The software is quite sophisticated and can detect most instances of cheating. It will be used to check each and every pair of students for every project.

Last modified on Monday January 25, 1999 (15:50:30 EST) by Alan Baumgarten
email: abaumg1@cs.umbc.edu

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