CSE-30332 Programming Paradigms

This class includes the following graded components:

• Exams 1 and 2 covering topics from each unit
• Final Exam covering all topics covered in this course
• Weekly Homeworks
• Course Project
• In-Class Participation & Attendance, which is graded based on formal attendance as well as smaller class activities that involve answering a few questions related with topics covered in class/readings. Unlike all the other graded components, the activities are graded based on completion instead of correctness.

Your final course grade is computed according to the following breakdown:

Grades are assigned as follows:

Please note that final grades are calculated based on the score ranges outlined above and are not subject to rounding; this is to ensure fairness and transparency in the assessment process. For example, a student with a final score equals to 89.99% is within the range for B+. The final grade shown on Canvas is the grade that will be sent out to the Office of Registrar.

"For absences planned in advance, the student must inform the instructor no less than one week prior to the planned absence; and for unplanned absences resulting from injury or illness, the student must provide the instructor appropriate verification from a health services provider, as described in section 3.1.3.5, no later than two business days after the period of absence concludes."

Deadlines are strictly enforced. There is a penalty of 15% for submissions up to 12hrs past the deadline. Submissions made more than 12hrs past the deadline are not accepted (i.e., they will be assigned 0). Please plan ahead your assignments.

HOWEVER...
Life Happens. We all lead densely-layered lives; therefore, one of my core values is leading with grace. As a result, I institute a “Life Clause”. Should you need it, you may invoke the “Life Clause” on THREE homeworks, and get a 2-day extension, no explanation required. To invoke a life clause, please fill out this request form by 5PM on the day of the assignment's deadline. The TAs will process the request within one business day and add the extension on Gradescope.

Notice: the life clause is only for homeworks.

• No extensions are given to activities because they are meant to be low-stakes assignments that can help you stay on track and follow the course content. Giving extensions would defeat the purpose of these activities.
• No extensions will be given to the self-assessment assignment because it is an extra credit assignment meant to help you review core concepts from pre-requisites that will be important for this class.
• The project has hard deadlines and no extension will be given to any group.
• A student who misses an exam will have their grade equals to zero.

To maintain fairness, the professor DOES NOT grant extensions on a case-by-case basis (i.e., the rules laid out in here applies to all students -- without exceptions).

It is cheating to copy, to allow another person to copy, all or part of an exam or an assignment, or to fake program output. It is also a violation of the Undergraduate Academic Code of Honor to observe and then fail to report academic dishonesty. You are responsible for the security and integrity of your own work.

For the individual assignments in this class, you may discuss with other students and consult printed and online resources. You may quote from books and online sources as long as you cite them properly. However, you may not look at another student's solution, and you may not copy any significant portions of other's solutions.

For the group project, the same rules applies. The main difference is that you are allowed -- and expected -- to discuss specifics of the solution for the project with your team members (i.e., students in your group). However, the group may not copy a solution from elsewhere (i.e., another team, book, tutorial, etc). Any honor code violation to the project will be reported as a major violation.

The following table summarizes how you may work with other students and use print/online sources:

See the CSE Guide to the Honor Code for definitions of the above terms.

Policies on the Use of Text/Code Generation Tools (ex: ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, etc.)

TL;DR: As a rule of thumb, if more than half of your assignment has been produced by an AI assistant, that corresponds to a honor code violation!

The use of text generation tools (ex: ChatGPT) or code generation tools (ex: GitHub Copilot) introduces authorship issues. As expressed above, this course expects that submitted assignments are a result of a student's individual effort (or group effort, for those assignments submitted in groups). Text/Code generation tools can include not only factual errors but also may plagiarize other works. In light of these concerns, this class will follow similar guidelines from the ACL 2023 policy on AI writing assistance. Thus, these AI tools can only be only used under the conditions outlined below. Notice that the text in blue is from the ACL 2023 policy, whereas the text written in black is what has been tailored to our class setting.

• ✅ Allowed Assistance purely with the language of the paper. When generative models are used for paraphrasing or polishing the author’s original content, rather than for suggesting new content - they are similar to tools like Grammarly, spell checkers, dictionary and synonym tools, which have all been perfectly acceptable for years. Thus, using these AI tools solely to assist with the writing is not an honor code violation.
• ✅ Allowed Short-form input assistance. Even though predictive keyboards or tools like smart compose in Google Docs are also powered by generative language models, nobody objected to them, since hardly anyone would try to use them to generate a long, unique and coherent text: it would simply not be practical. Thus, using these AI tools solely to autocomplete small pieces of text/code (i.e., words, variable names, etc) is not an honor code violation.
• ⚠️ Allowed but use with caution Literature search. Generative text models may be used as search assistants, e.g. to identify relevant literature. However, we expect the authors to read and discuss such references, just like the references identified by a regular search engine or a semantic literature recommendation tool. The usual requirements for citation accuracy and thoroughness of literature reviews apply; beware of the possible biases in suggested citations. That is, you can use AI assistant tools to help you find relevant related work or documentation for APIs/modules/libraries, but you still need to manually vet them, and cite them accordingly.
• ❌ Not AllowedLow-novelty text. Some authors may feel that describing widely known concepts is a waste of their time and can be automated. Since this is a class where the main goal is to learn, students must describe and cite widely known concepts on their own. This process should not be automated by writing assistants.
• ❌ Not AllowedNew ideas. If the model outputs read to the authors as new research ideas, that would deserve co-authorship or acknowledgement from a human colleague, and that the authors then developed themselves (e.g., topics to discuss, framing of the problem), then the text/idea should not be used for any assignment in this class.
• ❌ Not AllowedNew ideas + new text: a contributor of both ideas and their execution seems to us like the definition of a co-author, which the models cannot be. Therefore, it should not be used for this purpose in this class.
• ⚠️ Allowed with disclosure Code Generation for "Common Code": If a code generation tool (GitHub Copilot) is used similarly to StackOverflow, i.e., to understand how to write "common code" in a specific programming language (ex: how to open a file in python), that is allowed. However, the submission must disclose this use by including a comment near the generated code indicating the use of GitHub Copilot (or other tool).
• ❌ Not AllowedGenerate over 50% of the final solution. You may not under any circustances use an AI assistant to develop more than half of your final solution. For example, if the assignment asks you to implement depth-first (DFS) search using JavaScript, you may not request an AI assistant to generate the DFS implementation using JS (even if you don't use the generated code "as is" and still make minor changes, such as variable renamings, etc). Doing so is a honor code violation, and will be treated as such.

Per stated in Section 2.4.1 of the Undergraduate Academic Code of Honor "Faculty and anyone else responsible for teaching or assisting in a course will not tolerate academic dishonesty.". Therefore, if an instructor sees behavior that is academically dishonest, that professor is required to file either an Honor Code Violation Report (HCVR) or a formal report to the College of Engineering Honesty Committee.

The "Pencils Down" Rule: You may communicate about homework with your classmates at a high-level, give general advice, and chat about common problems. You may not communicate specific knowledge such as problem solutions or steps or planning documents. A good litmus test is if you would need to write it down to communicate or remember something, it is off limits. Seek homework help from the Professor or the TAs instead.