EECS 489 Computer Networks
Grading Policy

    Course Grade Composition:

      • 3 Programming Assignments (PAs): 40%
      • 1 Final Exam: 20 %
      • 1 Midterm Exam: 15%
      • 4 Homeworks (HWs): 20%
      • Class Participation: 5%

    The programming assignments are a most important part of this course. Prepare to spend long hours in front of the computer. Homeworks generally give you a chance to review materials covered in lectures and exercise your understanding of the algorithms and equations. Homeworks may occasionally require writing ``small'' programs. You get an E for the course if you failed both exams and do not show sufficient efforts in your homeworks and programming assignments. Exceptionallly great work gets an A+, awesome work an A, acceptable work a B, and mediocre work a C.

    Policy on Collaboration:

    You may, and are encouraged to, team up with up to two other students (so each team of up to 3 members) to work on your programming assignments. You may choose different team-mates for different PAs, but choice of team-mates is totally up to you. Homeworks, on the other hand, must be done individually.

    Acts of cheating and plagiarizing will be reported to the Engineering Honor Council. Cheating is when you copy, with or without modification, someone else's work that is not meant to be publicly accessible. Plagiarizing is when you copy, with or without modification, someone else's work that is publicly available without acknowledging the original source. You may also want to read the College of Engineering Honor Code.

    To discuss homework and programming assignments, when no actual solution or code is copied, is not considered cheating and is actually strongly encouraged. If you receive substantial help from another to do your assignment however, you must acknowledge them in your work. If you use any published materials (books, papers, or materials found on the Web) in your solution, I expect you to give full citation that will facilitate the locating of the original materials (for example, the URL of the Web site).

    Regrade and Late Days:

    You have five working days to ask for a regrade on everything. To ask for regrade, you must submit a written request explaining the technical reasons that would make a regrade necessary.

    You are granted a total of four free late days (including weekend) for the entire semester. Once you used up these four days, no late work will be accepted unless you had made prior arrangement with me at least a week before the work is due.

    Accounting for Grade and Late Days in Group Collaboration:

    (You probably don't want to read this until you have decided to stay in the course.)

    Let Na, Nb, and Nc be the number of free late days students A, B, and C have respectively. If A, B, and C work as a group (G), the number of free late days the group has is Ng = MIN(Na, Nb, Nc). No PA from G will be accepted Ng days after the due date unless prior arrangement has been made. The total number of free late days used up by the group is charged to each member. There are two possible prior arrangements:

    • An extension is requested a week before the PA is due. Except for dire circumstances, it is unlikely that an extension will be granted.
    • If MAX(Na, Nb, Nc) - Ng > 0, members of G may submit a work division contract a week after the PA has been assigned. Free late days are not applicable to the due day of the work schedule contract itself. Work done by the due date (or Ng days later) should be turned in by the due date (or Ng days later). Members with free late days > Ng may turn in their portion later than Ng up to the number of free late days they have. In this case, each member's free late days is accounted for independently of the other member's schedule.

    If neither of these two arrangements is made one week after a PA has been assigned, the default rule of the PA having only Ng number of free late days applies.

    Unless a work schedule contract is turned in one week after a PA has been assigned, the PA will be given one grade and each member will receive this same grade. Submission of work schedule one week after a PA has been assigned hence serves two purposes:

    • Separate accounting of each member's due date,
    • Separate grading of each member's work.

    It is up to you and your group members to decide whether you want to be viewed as a single team or a loose coalition of free agents. You may decide differently for each PA. For that matter, you may form a different group for each PA. There is extra planning and management overhead on your part if you decide to write up a work schedule contract; on the other hand, you may consider it an insurance against flunkies. You may want to start with the contract model until/unless you are comfortable working with your group mates as a team.