Policies and Conduct

Deadlines#

The deliverables page lists of all assessment due dates.

All deadlines are hard. No late submissions will be accepted.

Therefore, please take careful note of deadlines, plan for them, and adhere to them. Many of the assessments in this course are redeemable, so if you do miss one, don’t panic, you can make up the marks in the final exam.

However, if you fall victim to unforeseeable and unavoidable circumstances outside your control (such as illness, accident, and other misfortunes) which have a negative effect on your ability to study or to complete assessments on time, there are a number of mechanisms in place to help you. They are different, and which is the right one depends both on the assessment that has been affected and your situation. They all have in common that you must apply, and you must do that through the correct channel.

• If you have a chronic illness, disability or other circumstances that affect your ability to study and work long term, you should contact Access & Inclusion. They can put in place an education access plan (EAP) which may entitle you to certain adjustments to teaching and examination to help you avoid additional difficulties. Typical examples of adjustments include extra time, or access to extra tools or assistance, during exams. If you think this applies to you, you should contact them as early as possible.

• If you are unable to attend a scheduled exam (in this course, that is only the final exam), you can apply for deferred examination, that is, permission to sit the exam at a later date. Applications for deferral are made through an eform, and are handled by the ANU exams office. Course convenors have no say in the decision, and only find out when an application has been approved. Remember that your application must be accompanied by some form of documentation/evidence.

• For any assessment that you have attempted (or even not attempted, in the case of assignments) where you believe that circumstances that were unforeseeable and unavoidable (such as illness, misfortune, etc) have affected you negatively, the ANU has a new procedure from this semester, called the Extenuating Circumstances Application (ECA). You apply through an eform, and you have to provide documentation/evidence. The outcome of an ECA can be that the assessment is moved to another date, replaced with a different assessment, or reweighted.

• For an individual assessment deliverable, you can ask for an extension. To do so, please use the CECC Extension Request Form (see here). However, please remember that:

• Extensions to group assignment deliverables will never be given because some group members are unable to contribute to the group’s work. Likewise, extensions to group assignment deliverables will not be given to individual students (meaning, you cannot submit your “part” of a group deliverable later than the rest of the group). Planning your group’s work well ahead of due dates and committing/pushing your work regularly are important measures to help avoid a disaster if one group member becomes unexpectedly unavailable.

• Extensions will not be given for assessments that are too small to have an effect on the course mark. For example, you can miss one or two labs and still get full marks for class engagement, so extensions are not given for lab tasks.

• An extension request must always be made before the due date. The only exception is if your circumstances makes it impossible to contact us, for the whole of the time that you are affected until the due date.

• Finally, any application for extension must have supporting documentation/evidence, just like an application for deferral or an ECA.

Academic Integrity#

Honesty and integrity are of utmost importance.

These goals are not at odds with being resourceful and working collaboratively. You should be resourceful and you should discuss your work in this course with others taking the class.

The fundamental principle is that you must never misrepresent the work of others as your own.

If you have taken ideas from elsewhere or used code sourced from elsewhere, you must say so with utmost clarity. At each stage of the assignments you will be asked to submit a statement of originality, either as a group or as individuals. This statement is the place for you to declare which ideas or code contained in your submission were sourced from elsewhere.

Please read ANU’s official position on academic integrity. If you have any questions, please ask us.

When you do your assignments, carefully review the statement of originality which you must complete. Edit that statement and update it as you complete the assignment, ensuring that when you complete the assignment, a truthful statement is committed and pushed to your repo.

Generative AI#

The use of Generative AI Tools (e.g., ChatGPT) is permitted in this course, given that proper citation and prompts are provided, along with a description of how the tool contributed to the assignment. Guidelines regarding appropriate citation and use can be found on the ANU library’s Guide on Generative AI. Marks will reflect the contribution of the student rather than the contribution of the tools. Requests for further guidance on appropriate use should be directed to the convener for this course.

Generative AI access will neither be available nor permitted during the Lab Test, the Basic Competency Hurdle Assessment, and the Final Exam.

That being said, we discourage the use of Generative AI Tools in this class, particularly to generate solutions to assignments. Many problems in this class are easy enough for generative AI to solve (though it is still unreliable), but you need to practice doing this yourself in order to be able to pass the final exam and be equipped to take higher-level computing courses. If you use it, we recommend only using it during your learning process and to enhance efficiency in tasks you already know how to perform.

Email#

Do not email course convenors/lecturers. (This also applies to any other direct messaging channels, such as through Teams or Wattle.)

Instead, please do one of the following:

• When we’re meeting in person you are always welcome to speak to us one-to-one before or after a lecture, or when you see us in labs or elsewhere.
• For any matter relating to the course, use ed.
  • If the matter is private or necessarily contains solutions to your assignment, you may contact us privately through ed.
  • Only if the matter is sensitive enough to be for the convenor’s eyes only, for example,
    • Education Access Plans (EAPs) and other important course-related special circumstances
    • Harassment
    • Academic Integrity issues

    you may contact the course convenor e-mail address (comp1110@anu.edu.au).

• For ANU administrative matters (e.g. enrolment, permissions, etc.) contact Student Services (studentadmin.cecs@anu.edu.au).

Code of Conduct#

You have two primary responsibilities:

• Promote an inclusive, collaborative learning environment.
• Take action when others do not.

Professionally, we adhere to ACM’s Code of Ethics. More broadly, a course like COMP1110 involves reflection, collaboration, and communication. Computer science has a checkered history with respect to inclusion - in corporate environments, in our classrooms, and in the products we create. We strive to promote characteristics of transparency and inclusivity that reflect what we hope our field becomes (and not necessarily what it has been or is now).

Above all, be kind.

We reject behaviour that strays into harassment, no matter how mild. Harassment refers to offensive verbal or written comments in reference to gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, race, or religion; sexual images in public spaces; deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of class meetings, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention.

If you feel someone is violating these principles (for example, with a joke that could be interpreted as sexist, racist, or exclusionary), it is your responsibility to speak up! If the behaviour persists, send a private message to your course convener to explain the situation. We will preserve your anonymity.

(This code of conduct was developed by Evan Peck of Bucknell University (now University of Colorado Boulder). Portions of this code of conduct are adapted from Dr. Lorena A. Barba)