Extensions, Extenuating Circumstances Applications, and Education Access Plans#
Attending Labs#
Labs consist of two components: submitting a reasonable attempt at the lab exercises, and interacting with a tutor and answering some questions about your code. To get marks for the latter, you must attend a lab.
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.
The worst two labs are ignored when calculating final grades, which increases flexibility for one-off situations where attending a lab is difficult. 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).
Extensions and Deadlines#
COMP1110/6710 has a lot of built in flexibility that should minimise the need for you to formally apply for an extension. In particular, the only at-home assessments are Homeworks, all of which are only formally due at the end of Week 12.
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. Our homework tasks are due 12 weeks after the first is released - so even a severe but temporary illness may not qualify for an extension.
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 don’t apply.
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.
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, which in this course also feature a large oral component. To avoid unfairness based on random tutor assignments, tutors are not allowed to engage with you in a language other than English in code walks, 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.
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 Generative AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT). Hence, the use of any Generative AI tools is not permitted in the exams that make up a majority of the assessment for the course. While there’s nothing stopping you from turning to these tools for homework exercises, doing so is an extremely bad idea as it will defeat the purpose of the homeworks to prepare you for the exams.
We recommend that you 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, try to use different editors for those activities.
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 - 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)