CS 349 Course expectations, rules, grading

How to contact instructors - 1 The office hours are the best way to contact us in person. Meetings may be scheduled in advance if office hours are not suitable. Vallath Nandakumar will also see walk-in students if his office door is ajar. Anything told by us orally in the hallways or after class must be confirmed in writing, as the instructors cannot remember every rule or communication. If something slips through the cracks, remind us by .

How to contact instructors - 2 Piazza is a good way to ask questions that others might find useful. Ask as many as you like; students are encouraged to provide answers. Private Piazza posts are also OK when necessary (use it sparingly), and you can make them visible to only instructors. Canvas messages to instructors are not encouraged, except perhaps in response to something we have sent you via Canvas. If an assignment submission needs a comment, add it when you submit the assignment. An to the TA saying that you have an important comment is also useful. Do not add comments like 'Here is my assignment', as it is distracting -- we get notifications that we have to follow up.

Canvas All assignments are to be turned in on Canvas, except the peer grading feedback for the first draft of the final project. Notecards have to be turned in on Canvas and on paper. Canvas keeps track of all your submissions, including past ones that you intend to overwrite. They are not all visible, but you can view them through submission menus. In case of conflict between the Canvas deadline and a deadline elsewhere on the course webpages or class announcement, Canvas takes precedence. Contact us right away if you notice discrepancies. Watch out for 0's on your assignments, and notify us in a timely manner.

Assignments Homework assignments (long) Notecards (short) News articles iClicker Final project components

Rationale for the rules We have many students, and need the rules to be strict so as to be as fair as possible, and not to overburden the instructor staff.

Homework guidelines The information for how to do each homework is spread across different areas. Read all of them before you start your homework. – The Homework webpage (accessible from the Schedule webpage) tells you an outline of what to do for the homework, including word count. – The assignment rubric on Canvas, including the detailed descriptions of the grading categories, show how the points are distributed. – The assignment page on Canvas itself might also have some additional details on the homework.

Deadlines, slip days Slip days are provided so that if you happen to miss a deadline, you have some slack. Do not use up your slip days frivolously, nor ask us to accept work that is past the slip day deadline. No slip days are allowed for notecards or news articles. You are only allowed up to 2 slip days per homework or project component. One notecard and one news article may be skipped with no excuse. The lowest score will be anyway dropped. Interviews, university sponsored activities, and health reasons are not handled separately. Turn in your work early, if required. Please see the syllabus for the rules on notecards. Prolonged health or family emergency absences will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Missed homework and project components All (long) homework assignments will be counted. See the syllabus page for the slip day rules. The best strategy is to finish your homework early if you anticipate a problem around the deadline.

Grading disputes Grading issues or disputes must be brought to our attention in writing within five days of the grades being released. Write to the TA first, and wait 2 days for a response. Regrades will be strict, and your score may go down.

Grading Rubrics Read the rubrics carefully, including the longer descriptions. Excellence points are not guaranteed, and will only be given for work above and beyond what is stated, or work of exceptional quality. Remember that grading written work is partly subjective – we hope that if you lose some, you will also win some.

Computer use in class Please do not use computer devices in class, unless you have prior permission from the instructor. If you want to check up on something we are discussing, you may look something up. You are required then to share what you found.

What we expect from written work Follow the instructions as to word count or paragraph count. Go beyond the very minimum. Excellence counts. Essays are not computer programs that have to barely meet specs. Use the Undergraduate Writing Center. Let us know if they prove to be helpful/unhelpful, and why. Research and citations are expected for most long homeworks and for the project. Use standard citation format (any of them), including inline citations. Points will be deducted for URL's listed without proper formatting.

Editing your work Make a printed copy of your work. Read your work out aloud, making or noting down corrections on paper. Re-read your work a day after writing it. Double-check with the grading rubric. Check for header, name etc.

Which is the thesis statement? What has happened to the American male? For a long time, he seemed utterly confident in his manhood, sure of his masculine role in society, easy and definite in his sense of sexual identity. The frontiersmen of James Fenimore Cooper, for example, never had any concern about masculinity; they were men, and it did not occur to them to think twice about it. Even well into the twentieth century, the heroes of Dreiser, of Fitzgerald, of Hemingway remain men. But one begins to detect a new theme emerging in some of these authors, especially in Hemingway: the theme of the male hero increasingly preoccupied with proving his virility to himself. And by mid-century, the male role had plainly lost its rugged clarity of outline. Today men are more and more conscious of maleness not as a fact but as a problem. The ways by which American men affirm their masculinity are uncertain and obscure. There are multiplying signs, indeed, that something has gone badly wrong with the American male's conception of himself.

Which is the thesis statement? What has happened to the American male? For a long time, he seemed utterly confident in his manhood, sure of his masculine role in society, easy and definite in his sense of sexual identity. The frontiersmen of James Fenimore Cooper, for example, never had any concern about masculinity; they were men, and it did not occur to them to think twice about it. Even well into the twentieth century, the heroes of Dreiser, of Fitzgerald, of Hemingway remain men. But one begins to detect a new theme emerging in some of these authors, especially in Hemingway: the theme of the male hero increasingly preoccupied with proving his virility to himself. And by mid-century, the male role had plainly lost its rugged clarity of outline. Today men are more and more conscious of maleness not as a fact but as a problem. The ways by which American men affirm their masculinity are uncertain and obscure. There are multiplying signs, indeed, that something has gone badly wrong with the American male's conception of himself.

Clicker question Which of the lines A, B, C or D in the next page is the thesis statement?

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent, and our language—so the argument runs—must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written. A B C E D

Thesis statement The thesis statement is that sentence or two in your text that contains the focus of your essay and tells your reader what the essay is going to be about. Revisit your thesis statement after your essay is done. – Make sure it is comprehensive and complete. Rephrase thesis statements like "In this paper, we show …". – Such statements, however, are better than no thesis statements.

Ethical analysis in your writing Include ethical analysis in your writing where appropriate. The Research and Analysis part of the grading rubric may not explicitly state ethical analysis.