Instructors

Staff

Organization

The course is a “studio” course, a concept that originated in art schools. In a studio course, the instructor presents basic techniques, discusses domain knowledge for specific projects, and then teaches with the help of student presentations.

Coding is all about comprehending code. Doing well with this task demands tremendous practice. Hence when your peers present code, it is critical for you to read, understand, and analyze their explanations and justifications: their problem analysis, their interface design, their component design, and their code. The presenters will learn to communicate about products to a team, to defend their design decisions, and to get help with weak spots. Conversely, the listeners will learn to analyze and to critique a product, helping the presenter uncover flaws.

Final Code Walks

In lieu of a final, we will conduct an extensive code walk of your projects. If the course progresses on schedule, the final code walks will be held during the finals examination period. If the course progresses faster than anticipated, all final code walks will take place during the final week of classes.

We will announce the details later in the semester.

Code of Conduct

This class is centered around learning the concepts of designing and developing software. This is reflected in both the warm-up assignments and project milestones. Therefore, these should not be discussed outside your partnership. Furthermore, all work you submit must be performed by you and your chosen partner. Once you see other people’s solutions to weekly projects in class, you may choose to modify your own in response to these presentations.

In the real world, you will usually do your own research and stumble upon an algorithm or approach that helps you in your design or implementation. We ask that you cite that as a source but not use or copy any related code. Crediting your sources is always good practice. Note you are still responsible for explaining what you have found in technical detail when pressed at any time in this course. Understanding how these ideas work and why they are important to your design is a key concept of this course.

All written materials, including code and design documents, must be the work of you and your partner. This means you may not share your written materials with other students or people you are not partnered with. Similarly, you may not view or use the written materials of other students or people you are not partnered with. In short,

• Everything in your lab notebook is written by you and only you

• No reading or copying code or text from other groups, internet archives, or other sources.

• Everything you present in your code walks is made from you and your partner.

Any violation of this will result in a 0 on the given assignment and will be reported to the Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution (OSCCR).

If any student does not understand these terms or any material outlined in Northeastern University Academic Integrity Policy it is their responsibility to talk to the professor. All cases of suspected plagiarism or other academic dishonesty will be referred to the OSCCR.

Late Policy

You are allowed to turn your work in after the deadline, with a penalty of 4% of your grade per hour. For example, submitting 10 minutes late reduces your grade by 4%, submitting 5 hours and 1 minute late reduces your grade by 24%. Submitting more than 25 hours late will result in a zero. This will be automatically determined by the Handins server. You can submit as many times as you wish. We thus recommend submitting even a partial solution well before the deadline. That way if something goes wrong, you’ll get at least partial credit (and feedback).

Regrade Policy

You can request a regrade of your assignment submission 3 days after the grades for that assignment have been released. The request has to be made by emailing the grader of your assignment directly and Cc’ing your section’s instructor.

Forum

The primary forum for this class is on Piazza, which you can use to ask questions and exchange wisdom while completing assignments. We will also use Piazza to broadcast announcements to the class, so you will be expected to check it at least every few days. Participate actively and use it as a first place to post questions related to assignments, programming, debugging, exams, etc. Please use the forum to post questions and answers that may be useful to others. Bottom line: unless you have a private problem, post to Piazza before writing the instructors or one of the TAs an email.

Please register on Piazza by going to https://piazza.com/northeastern/spring2021/cs4500/.

Note: The Piazza forum is meant for discussion related to the topics of this course and to exchange knowledge. While we welcome debates about the course structure, the whys and why nots, or other general topics, we reserve the right to change the visibility of posts we think do not contribute to the learning aims of this course. You are most welcome to talk to us about any topic directly – after class, in office hours, or in an ad-hoc/scheduled meeting.

Grades

The final grade breakdown is as follows:

• 10% warm-up assignments
• 48% project milestones
• 12% code walks
• 12% panel participation
• 12% final code walk
• 5% lab book

The letter grade breakdown is as follows:

Letter	Range
A	93 - 100
A-	90 - 92
B+	87 - 89
B	83 - 86
B-	80 - 82
C+	77 - 79
C	73 - 76
C-	70 - 72
D+	67 - 69
D	63 - 66
D-	60 - 62
F	<60

Inclusive Class

Northeastern University values the diversity of our students, staff, and faculty; recognizing the important contribution each makes to our unique community. Respect is demanded at all times throughout this course. In the classroom, not only is participation required, it is expected that everyone is treated with dignity and respect. We realize everyone comes from a different background with different experiences and abilities. Our knowledge will always be used to better everyone in the class. We strive to create a learning environment that is welcoming to students of all backgrounds. If you feel unwelcome for any reason, please let us know so we can work to make things better. You can let us know by talking to anyone on the teaching staff. If you feel uncomfortable talking to members of the teaching staff, please consider reaching out to your academic advisor. Northeastern is committed to providing equal access and support to all qualified students through the provision of reasonable accommodations so that each student may fully participate in the learning experience. If you have a disability that requires accommodations, please contact the Disability Resource Center http://www.northeastern.edu/drc/, DRC@northeastern.edu, 617-353-2675. Accommodations cannot be made retroactively and to receive an accommodation a letter from the DRC or LDP is required.

NUFlex

During recitation, instructors will wear a face covering, and we expect you to do the same. We all need to stay six feet apart, including when we are masked. We won’t be able to eat or drink in class (except water). If you test positive for COVID-19, you will need to enter isolation as directed by the university’s telehealth team. We expect that you will not come in-person to class and that you will follow the guidance from the university telehealth team to isolate and get appropriate healthcare if needed.