Assignment Policies

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In the past, I have left getting work done up to you. Unfortunately, that often results in students not keeping up with the course, and doing very poorly on exams. This term, I am not going to let you put things off. Here are the rules we will follow for all assignments in the class:

When are Assignments Available?

I will post notes and assignments for each week on Sunday before we will be covering that material. The assignment is available on Sunday and you can start working on it at that time. Some assignments are ready for you to work as soon as they are posted, others may need a bit of explaining, which we will do on our first meeting of the week. Nothing will prevent you from setting up any code you might need to write, so do that as soon as you can after the assignment is posted.

Working on Assignments

You should push your work to GitHub as often as seems reasonable. In most cases, reasonable means when you feel the need to step away from the project, either because you are stuck, or you have reached a milestone of some sort. Never walk away from your workstation without making sure your present work is safely stored on GitHub. Think of this as marvelous backup system. If you walk away and someone steals your machine, at least your work is safe! You can go after the thief sure your work is safe!

When Is The Assignment Due?

All assignments are due on the following Sunday at Midnight. I will check the work on your Github account, and grade it as soon as I can. Here is where GitHub gives us some cool power. After I review your work, I may offer a chance to improve that work. I will post comments about the work, and the grade you have so far on Blackboard. If I offer the chance, you can continue working on the project into the following week with no penalty and improve your work.

Penalties for Late Work

If you have nothing worthy of grading in your repository by that first Sunday at midnight, you can continue to work and submit the project through the second week after the assignment is posted. However, the highest grade you can earn now is 80% of the available points. Once again, I may allow you to continue to work on the assignment for an additional week, but only if I tell you do do so in comments on Blackboard.

If you have not submitted some work for me to review by Sunday midnight of the second week, you will not get credit for that assignment. That means you must at least start the project within two weeks of the assignment to have a chance to earn points on that assignment. In this scheme, you will be finished with each assignment after three weeks max!

Exceptions

These rules are not absolute. However, you must let me know about circumstances that may prevent you from completing an assignment before the deadlines, not after. In most cases, I will adjust dedlines to get you past the situation. Often this is a job issue, or a family issue, and (as I know too well) a medical issue.

Rationale

This scheme is not intended to punish you, but, rather, to encourage you to put the required effort into this class. If this was your job, you would be expected to get your work done as quickly as you can. No work, No reward! (Or points in this case!) By keeping up with the work, you stand a much better chance to do well on the exams! I have seen far too many students do poorly in my classes, simply because they put things off until it was too late to catch up.