Ethics

All students in this course are expected to follow a few basic rules of ethical conduct:

• As a member of the Simon Fraser University community, you are bound by its Code of Academic Integrity and Good Conduct. Read it!
• Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all assignments and assessed activities must be your own original work. You must cite any help you get, whether it be from people (friends, TAs, instructors, your uncle who works at Microsoft), or from books, websites, magazines, and so on.
• You may of course work with others in an effort to understand the material, but you are responsible for mastering and understanding everything yourself.
• You may not share your assignments with other students. For instance, we consider it dishonest if you let another student read a program you have written, e.g. emailing a friend a copy of your program so they can learn from it is not acceptable in this course. Similarly, taking a picture of someones work with, or without their permission, is considered dishonest in this course.
• If you get the help of a tutor or assistant (e.g. someone who answers a question you ask on a web forum), or an academic assistance service of any kind, you must provide the following information:
  • Contact information.
  • A brief description of the nature of the assistance.
  • Copies of all materials given to the assistant.
  • Copies of all materials returned by the assistant.
• Markers may sometimes use software to check for suspicious assignments. Such programs simply flag suspicious files, and the marker will then manually investigate further to determine if any copying has occurred.
• Assignment extensions or deferrals are usually only granted for medical or compassionate reasons. For instance, we need a doctor’s note confirming that you are so unwell as to need an extension. The best way to do this is to fill out SFU's certificate of illness form. A note that merely says you visited a doctor is not usually good enough.

Assignment and Exam Notes

• If it’s necessary to change the due date for an activity, as much advanced notice as possible will be given.
• Sometimes instead of giving you a mark based on the work you submit for an activity, we may replace it with an oral quiz. Such a quiz is meant to test your understanding of what you submitted, and may ask you to do things like explain your work, make small changes to it, and so on.
• If you miss the final exam for a valid reason, then you will be given a chance to rewrite it.