C S 4 0 4

A R T I F I C I A L I N T E L L I G E N C E

H O M E W O R K P O L I C Y

Homeworks will be given every week, or every other week and be due a week later (6 days to a week, I am starting to sound more and more like a lawyer just to be safe J). They will be mostly from the book. Some homeworks will be graded and some won’t, randomly. Since we do not have enough TA support for this course, this is a commonly used method that still requires the students to study on time, while reducing the amount of grading.

Expectations

All exams, programming assignments, and written homeworks must be done individually! Code for programming assignments must not be developed in groups, nor should code be shared. You are encouraged to discuss with your peers, the TA or the instructor ideas, approaches and techniques broadly, but not at a level of detail where specific implementation issues are described by anyone.

Submission

- Through WebCT only.

- Label your homework as FirstnameLastname-hw3.doc etc. Write your name inside the file as well.

- Do not use unknown or uncommon file types that we may not be able to open (doc, rtf, pdf, ps, zip are fine).

- You may submit your homework multiple times, and you may also submit late (see below), so make all your submissions there.

- Submissions to the TA or to me will not be accepted! Even if late, everything has to be on Webct in order for us to be able to keep track of these things.

Late homeworks

- You will lose 10% each day that you are late (e.g. even 5 minute late loses 10% as WEBCT times are precise). Don’t try to submit at the last 5 minutes. If you do, you are responsible of possible lateness, webside down, Webct has a different clock... problems. You can be late at most by 3 days. NO EXCEPTIONS!

I receive 5-20 late homework messages as the ones shown below (made ANONYMOUS) after each homework.

“hocam hw3 u 22.01 de submit ettim ve LATE dedi bi problem olur mu ?” (ödev saat 22:00’a due iken)

“ Merhaba Hocam,

Son soruyu yapmaya çalışırken saatin 21:58 olduğunu gördüm ve ödevi submit ettim fakat, WebCT nin saatine göre ödevi 1 dakika geç vermiş oldum. Late olduğu için retrieve de edemiyorum. Böyle olacağını bilseydim son soruyu tamamlayıp yine late yollardım. Şimdi hem son soru yarım kaldı hem de ödevim late olmuş oldu. Hocam, 1 dakika için ödevim late olarak değerlendirilecek mi yoksa bu gibi durumları istisna olarak kabul ediyor musunuz bunu sormak istedim.”

“Hocam merhaba,

Yaklaşık deadline'dan 10-15 dakika öncesinden beri yeni webct'mizin submission problemiyle uğraşıyorum. En sonunda dosyamı bir arkadaşa yolladım ve o submit etti.
Sanırım yeni webct Firefox'un 2.0 versiyonuyla (ve de Konqueror browserıyla, -başka kullanmıyorum-) uyumlu değil, şimdiye kadar hiç teslimde sorun yaşamazken bugün yaşadım, ve ne yazık ki ödevi late teslim ettim. Rica edeceğim şudur ki bir defalığına bu 2-3 dakikalık farkı göz önünde bulundurmamanız uygun olur mu? Submission'ı bu kadar geçe bırakmamın benim suçum olduğunu biliyorum, fakat gerçekten bir talihsizlik sonucu böyle bir durumla karşı karşıya kaldım. “

I think you can judge making reading each of these emails, judging the case and making exceptions is not the way to go. All late homeworks are considered late. It is your responsibility as mostly senior students to do your job on time. If you still have a hard time understanding why I am being strict, I will summarize it in another way:

- I want the students to learn about rules and timeliness and responsibilities

- Making exceptions is difficult (one needs to take notes that this student will not receive late penalty)

- Making exceptions is unfair (how do I really judge on which one to give an exception to: what if a student slept and was 1 hr late?)

- I don’t like that you want me to spend extra time when you haven’t spent yours: you can always submit and then re-submit when you make changes. It will waste a bit of your time, but you will make sure you won’t be late.

After I have written so much explanation, I will ignore all such emails from now on, without answering them.