How to have a great CS 131

Here is some advice on how to have a great CS 131. The short version is that we expect you’ll be actively engaged in learning, collaborate with others (especially in the classroom and lab, optionally on assignments), and abide by the Honor Code.

Expectations

What we expect of you

To have a great semester in CS 131, here is what we expect from you:

Learning. We expect you to learn lots of things in this course.

Advocating for yourself. We expect you to take an active part in your learning by regularly coming to class and lab on time and participating in the work. We also expect that you’ll be eager to ask lots of questions as part of your learning: in class, lab, office hours, and Piazza.

Advocating for others. We expect you to attend to the learning of your colleagues in the course, by collaborating with them and by not talking over them. The vast majority of students in this course are new to almost all of the course material. Some students arrive on day one ready to talk about advanced Haskell compiler optimizations (not a part of the course). All of that is fine, and expected. But remember that others may be working hard to increase their learning, and be mindful about encouraging them, rather than discouraging them.

Professional ethics. We expect you to be accountable to your collaborators (e.g., showing up at agreed-upon meeting times and sharing the work equally). We expect you to abide by Harvey Mudd’s Honor Code.

What you can expect from us

Similarly, there are things you can and should expect from us:

Learning. You can expect to learn lots of things in this course.

A supportive learning environment. Learning is hard work! To help you learn, you can expect us, the instructors, to support you by encouraging an environment of academic vulnerability. Academic vulnerability means that it’s good to say “I don’t know”, to ask questions, to be lost, and to take risks in your learning by trying new things and by your willingness to make mistakes. We’ll make sure it’s safe to do so—by encouraging collaboration and celebrating our mistakes, wrong answers, and the things we don’t yet know.

Reasonable flexibility. We understand that you’re not doing PLs 100% of the time! For the times when you are, we want you to feel that you can do your best work. That includes having things you require, such as accommodations for disabilities. It also includes the need to occasionally turn in an assignment late, say to accommodate a life event or short illness. These realities are built into the design of the course. If, however, you feel that the built-in flexibility does not support your learning, please come talk to us.

Professional ethics. You can expect us to act professionally and ethically as your instructors. In part, that means that you can expect confidentiality from us, when it comes to your grades or other aspects of your learning in the course. We also believe that your learning changes over time and reflects your prior experience, not your intelligence, your commitment, or your worth as person.

Getting Help in Person

We hope and expect that you’ll be regular visitors to office hours and the grutors’ tutoring hours. Come see us! We will set regularly scheduled hours, and you’re also welcome to drop by our offices if the door is open or set up an appointment outside of the scheduled hours.

Optional Pair Programming

CS 131 allows students the option of using pair-programming on homework assignments, after the first warmup assignment. You may decide on a weekly basis whether you want to work with a partner, and if so, with whom. The only constraint is that you cannot partner with the same person more than four times.

If/when you choose to pair program, you must use full CS 70 pair-programming methodology; namely, you must spend your time working together as a team, with one person at the keyboard and the other at their side watching and making suggestions. At regular intervals, the roles must switch.

All parts of the submitted work must be a true joint effort. You will be violating the Honor Code if you divide the work such that you work separately, with one person doing part of the work and the other person doing the rest, or if one person does the work while the other just watches passively (or works on something else).

Collaborating Outside of Pair Programming

We would love for you to discuss the lecture and reading topics with any or all of your classmates, from informal hallway chats up to organized study groups.

You can even discuss assignments and the ideas involved, including general approaches to the problems, bugs in the specification, how long you’ve spent working on a problem, and so forth. You may also help each other with basic issues related to completing the assignments—how to use UNIX, Haskell syntax, and the like.

Two good rules for appropriate collaboration on homework assignments are the “in your head rule” and “understanding, not rote learning” rules. When students help each other, they should leave with understanding in their heads, not physical or electronic artifacts. Thus you are not allowed to meet as a group and leave with notes on paper, nor can you help someone fix a bug and then leave without first reverting the bug to its unfixed state. Similarly, it is not okay to leave with an answer you don’t understand (in the worst case, where such a situation seems unavoidable because you have found out the answer but still don’t understand it and have to leave, it is vital for you to say so, since not doing so is dishonest).

Also, if you are helping someone, remember that giving away answers can be detrimental to someone’s understanding—often it is better to ask leading questions instead. Working together as peers and coming to an understanding together is, of course, even better.

Reminder: The Honor Code

All students in the course are expected to understand and abide by the Harvey Mudd College’s Honor Code. (See the relevant section of the HMC student handbook.) If you haven’t already done so, you must read, sign, and abide by the computer-science department’s interpretation of the Honor Code to participate in this course. (See https://tinyurl.com/hmc-cs-honorcode for details.) Specifically:

• You must not exchange literal copies of material, whether that material consists of code, program output, or English-language text (e.g., documentation). You also may not copy material from published or online sources, with or without cosmetic changes (such as altering variable names), without explicit permission. If you do have permission to use externally written material, you must attribute it properly and clearly indicate which material is yours and which material is not yours.

• You should not do anything that a reasonable student peer would describe as “subverting the clear intent of the assignment”, unless you have asked for and received permission to do so. For example, finding open-sourced code that you can use to solve an assigned problem, would typically be subverting the intent of the assignment because your shortcut means that you do not learn what the assignment aims to teach.
• If you use any sources to assist you, you must document them. If a “tip” derived from Piazza ends up incorporated into your graded work, you must credit the source. (A clarification about assignment requirements or a debugging tip, however, need not be credited.)
• If any assigned material is substantially similar to material you have done before please contact your professors. In particular, in a situation where we are expecting you to do new work, you may not reuse or refer back to substantially similar work you have previously done. It is just as bad to copy from your past self as from someone else.
• Academic integrity also involves being careful enough to avoid unintentionally breaking the rules. Thus, you must read instructions in assignments and exams carefully so that you are aware of any limitations they place on you, such as time restrictions or restrictions on information sources you may consult.
• Similarly, if you see something that plausibly seems like it ought to be off-limits to you, such as a repository directory belonging to another student or files from a previous semester, you should immediately contact us to let us know that something doesn’t seem right, rather than looking further at something that perhaps you should not see at all.
• If you aren’t sure whether something you’ve done or plan to do is allowed, you should explicitly document what you did and—if at all possible—consult with the course staff, ideally before you take the questionable action. Similarly, document any extensive or particularly important help you obtain, even if that help seems legitimate. If you’ve been helped so much that we can’t consider the work truly your own, you might not be able to get full credit for it but proper attribution will avoid an Honor Code violation.
• The Honor Code requires you to take action when you see other people doing something questionable (in this course, or any other). If you like, you can begin by talking to the person concerned to find out what is going on, and perhaps encourage them to talk to their course staff if what they are doing seems questionable. But you should probably also report the issue to the course instructor(s) as well, just to be sure. Don’t just be a passive observer; taking action might not always be pleasant, but without vigilance from everyone, the Honor Code cannot live up to its ideals.

These principles apply to all methods and media of discussion or exchange (voice, writing, email, etc.).

While obviously it is best to avoid Honor Code related issues, it’s worth remembering that everyone makes mistakes and errors of judgment once in a while—where you show your true character is not just in how careful you are to avoid errors of judgment but also in how you handle them if they occur.