Course Policies

Extensions, Extenuating Circumstances Applications, and Education Access Plans#

Attending Lectures#

We expect you to generally attend lectures. Sometimes, life happens and you are unable to do so. We will provide lecture materials where applicable, and recordings of lectures are made available on Echo360 (these are to be treated as helpful resources to refresh your memory of the material and backup options in special circumstances, not as general replacements of attending lectures).

Class Engagement marks count the 8 best results across all lectures, with at least 16 opportunities across the semester. As such, missing a few lectures will not impact your class engagement mark.

If you have ongoing health issues that affect your ability to attend lectures regularly, you may need to apply for an Education Access Plan (EAP, see below) and then discuss this with the course convener.

Attending Labs#

You are expected to attend labs, as your engagement in them determines your Lab Engagement mark. If you cannot attend a lab in a certain week, contact your tutor as quickly as possible. You may also wish to contact another tutor and ask if you can attend their lab instead that week. If you are unable to attend any lab for a week, your tutor may, at their discretion, allow you to present your code in the following week. This is not automatic, so contact your tutor to arrange it as soon as you know that you won’t be able to attend.

If you have ongoing health issues that affect your ability to attend labs regularly, you may need to apply for an Education Access Plan (EAP, see below) and then discuss this with the course convener.

Attending Workshops#

Workshops are not recorded. Everyone is expected to attend the workshop on Tuesday in week 3. If you are enroled in COMP1140, you are expected to attend the workshops from week 4 onward. Those later workshops count towards the Workshop Engagement mark in COMP1140. If you are enroled in COMP1140 and cannot attend one of those later workshop because of valid reasons (accidents, health issues, etc.), contact the course convener as soon as possible.

If you have ongoing health issues that affect your ability to attend workshops regularly, you may need to apply for an Education Access Plan (EAP, see below) and then discuss this with the course convener.

Extensions and Deadlines#

If special circumstances outside of your control (accidents, significant illness, etc.) prevent you from submitting a homework on time, you can apply for an Extension. We generally judge extension requests to a similar standard as written for Extenuating Circumstances Applications (see below). Note that ANU policy requires the circumstances to have a severe impact and must be relevant to the assessment type, and lists a number of reasons that are explicitly not allowed. For illnesses, such definitely inadmissible reasons include mild illness – a cold, mild virus, sore throat, cramping, mild gastro-intestinal infections, feeling out of sorts etc. . For more details, see ANU policy and procedure. You will need to provide sufficient evidence that a valid (and therefore not excluded) circumstance applies.

If you have ongoing health issues that affect your ability to work on assignments on a more chronic basis, you may need to apply for an Education Access Plan (EAP, see below).

Extenuating Circumstances Applications#

If special circumstances outside of your control (accidents, illness, etc.) prevent you from attending an exam, you can make an Extenuating Circumstances Application. These are outside of the control of the conveners, but ANU policy and procedure apply similar to extensions.

For the Final Exam, a typical outcome is a deferred examination, in which case you have to take the exam at a later date (often at the start of the following semester). For the Mid-Term Tests, note that they are redeemable in the final exam, so deferred examinations do not apply.

DO NOT ATTEND AN EXAM IF YOU ARE SICK!. This would be a breach of the Student Code of Conduct as you would endanger the wellbeing of others, and invalidate any deferrals you may have obtained for that exam through the ECA process.

Education Access Plans#

If you have a disability or ongoing health condition, you may be able to get an Education Access Plan, which provides individualised relief depending on your condition. This may entail special exam arrangements, easier assignment extensions, and other things.

To get an Education Access Plan, you need to register with ANU Accessibility.

If you have an Education Access Plan, read it carefully. It typically states that you have a responsibility to contact the course conveners and teaching staff to discuss your EAP. Many accommodations can only be implemented if you have discussed your needs with us. Essentially, that applies to everything except for standard coursework extensions and centralised exam arrangements. Note that midterm tests in COMP1110 may not be centrally organised; if you want any special exam arragements to be met for your midterm tests, you need to discuss this with us well before those tests.

Working Code#

For all assessment items, you need to submit working code. This particularly entails code that compiles. Submitting code that does not compile means that by default the assessment mark is 0. We may, at our discretion, decide to apply simple fixes to your code where possible in order to make it compile, in exchange for appropriate mark reductions.

Language of Instruction#

English is the language of instruction at ANU. This particularly applies to assessments. To avoid unfairness based on random tutor assignments, tutors are not allowed to engage with you in a language other than English, even if they speak other languages.

Should you need it, the university is offering to help with your English language skills in various ways.

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. For each of the assignments you will be asked to submit a statement of originality. This statement is the place for you to declare which ideas or code contained in your submission were sourced from elsewhere.

We encourage you to discuss assignments and/or project work with others taking the class. In the COMP1140 project, we encourage you to test combinations of your solutions as discussed in the workshops. However, for all assignments involving coding, every piece of code must be your own work. Do not share your code with anybody in- or outside of the course except for course staff.

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, and make sure it reflects reality.

Beware the offers of so-called tutoring services, cram schools, and the like. Using their services often amounts to contract cheating, which is a very severe form of academic integrity violation. If you need help with the course, make use of the class forum, workshops, and drop-in consultations!

Generative AI#

This course introduces fundamental concepts that could potentially be addressed by certain tools based on Large Language Models (e.g. ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot). Hence, the use of any tooling or functionality based on Large Language Models is not permitted in graded assessments and in the context of any activities involving assessments (including, but not limited to, lectures and labs) within this course. Any use of AI tools in graded assessments will be considered a breach of academic integrity and handled accordingly. The use of large language models is also highly discouraged for any other use case in connection with this course, including translation, summarization, explanation, debugging, and in general replacing talking to other human beings (be it fellow students or university staff).

We know that it may be enticing to have something that instantly provides an answer to any question you might have, free from judgment. We (the course staff) might not be as fast, and sometimes not as nice. However, we are still usually pretty quick, are much more likely to give you a correct answer, and more importantly, will always try to give you an answer that helps you learn (which might not be a full answer to your original question). We’re here to help you!

You must set up any editors you use for the class to have any sort of generative-AI-assistance turned off. If you are using generative AI for other activities, use different editors for those activities.

To pass the course, you will have to pass the 40% hurdle in the Final Exam. The final exam happens in an inviglated computer lab without internet access. There will be two midterm tests in Week 5 and Week 10 under similar conditions to prepare you for that.

It may be tempting to “bank” as many marks as possible from insecure assessments (in particular the homeworks) where in most cases we cannot prove the use of large language models. The ANU Assessment Rule gives us the ability to require you to take an additional assessment after the final exam to ensure that your “performance in the coursework is adequatly and fairly assessed”. This does not require any proof of cheating or other misconduct on your part. We plan to make use of this procedure. The best way to avoid it is to truly do your assignments yourself, so they will be largely in line with your exam performance.

None of this course’s content is made with generative AI. I (your course convenor) believe it is disrespectful to my students to give them AI slop. Please show the same respect to me and your tutors when submitting work.

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, whether in corporate environments, in our classrooms, or 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)_