Textbook: none.

Programming Languages: This course will include a number of programming assignments in the Scheme programming language. I will of course discuss Scheme in class and provide a lot of sample code, but you will also be expected to read the reference documentation. In addition, you will be required to write programs in two other programming languages to be selected later. Learning those other languages well enough to write the programs is entirely your responsibility.

Attendance: I expect you to attend class. I will not penalize you for missing class, but since there is a strong correlation between attendance and grades, you will almost certainly be indirectly penalized. You are responsible for any discussions, announcements, or handouts that you miss. If you need to leave class early for any reason, please let me know before class begins.

Exams: midterm and noncomprehensive final (20% each). I will announce the midterm date at least one week in advance. If you miss an exam without making prior arrangements, or if you cheat on an exam, you will get a zero. I may curve exam scores; if so, I will announce the curve when I hand back the exam.

Projects: complete two programming assignments in two different programming languages, chosen from a list that I provide (10% each). You must work individually, but you may talk about ideas and your language with other students. At most two students may use the same language per project. Complete details will be provided later in the semester.

Programming Assignments: six to eight, collectively worth 40%.

1. Programming assignments will be due by 9:00am on a Tuesday; they must be sitting in my email inbox by that time. You must email the source code, in a single file, as an attachment. I will reply by 5:00 that afternoon either with a grade, if the assignment is correct, or an indication of what went wrong otherwise. If your program failed for any reason, it is worth nothing, and you must correct and resubmit it.
2. Assignments are worth 10 points (out of 10) on Tuesday, 9 on Wednesday, 8 on Thursday, 7 on Friday, 6 on the following Monday, and 0 thereafter. Assignments received after 9:00am are treated as if they were turned in the following day. I will grade at most one submission per day, namely the most recent one received by 9:00am.
3. All grades are tentative until one week after the original due date. If I reply with a grade and then discover that you cheated, I will lower your grade as appropriate.
4. I may reply that your program has "hung", when in fact it just takes a very long time to finish. If that happens, your program is unacceptably slow and must be rewritten to receive credit. Unless I tell you otherwise, programs should complete within a few seconds.
5. I will not debug programs for you. Feel free to ask specific questions via email; make sure to put "question" somewhere in the subject line so that I know to read it as soon as possible. If you need more general help come by during office hours.

Grading, and the Slide: I will compute your total score as the weighted average of your percentage scores, using the weights listed above. My standard grading scale is 90% = A, 80% = B, 70% = C, 60% = D, lower = F. I may add a slide factor of between 1 and 10 points that reflects my subjective impression of the relative difficulty of the course. I will not know the exact slide until after the final exam, and it will usually be zero. For example, a slide of 4 means that the grading scale is 86% = A, 76% = B, and so on.

Rule D: I believe that in order to pass a course, a student should have a passing average in all areas of coursework: exams, homework, labs, and projects. Rather than enforce this as an absolute rule, as some instructors do, I have adopted Rule D: if your average in any area consisting of two or more scores is below a D, I subtract the difference from your total average. The following examples assume no slide. Example 1: You have a 74% total average and a 58% exam average; I subtract 2 points (60-58), reducing your total average to 72%. Example 2: You have a 71% total average but a 43% homework average; I subtract 17 points (60-43), reducing your total average to 54% (an F).

Academic Integrity: Missouri State University is a community of scholars committed to developing educated persons who accept the responsibility to practice personal and academic integrity. You are responsible for knowing and following the university's student honor code, Student Academic Integrity Policies and Procedures, also available at the Reserves Desk in Meyer Library. Any student participating in any form of academic dishonesty will be subject to sanctions as described in this policy.

Plagiarism: copying all or part of anyone else's code, regardless of the source, is prohibited. Exception: you may use code that I provide in class, code from the textbook, or code from Web sites with direct links from my home page. The first time you are guilty of plagiarism, you will get a zero for the offending assignment. The second time, you will get an F for the course. Excessive collaboration is a more subtle form of plagiarism involving two or more students in the class; see below.

Collaboration: here's the rule:

You may discuss ideas with other students but you may not share any code or answers.

That's it. If you turn in code or answers that are the same as (or very similar to) someone else's, then you have cheated. I don't care what your intentions were. If, after analyzing your code/answers, I think it is statistically very likely that sharing has occurred, I will divide the credit among the offending parties (on the first offense), assign a 0 (on the second offense), or assign an F for the course (on the third offense). Note: when determining whether two pieces of code are the same, I ignore irrelevant differences such as variable names, whitespace, comments, indentation, parentheses, brackets, literal strings, declaration order, and simple logical and/or algebraic code translations.

Unacceptable excuses:

• "I was trying to help this guy, but he was really thick-headed, so I finally just said, 'Here, look at my solution so you can see what I mean.'"
• "We just traded code to make sure we're getting the same answers."
• "We just traded code so we could check each other's work for errors."
• "I thought it was OK to work together."
• "I thought it was OK to work together as long as we gave the names of everyone we worked with."

Obviously if the answer to a problem is very short (a few words or numbers, or a line or two of code), then it's likely that most people will come up with the same answer. That's OK. But if a problem requires a longer series of calculations, a long written answer, or code of more than a few lines, then the likelihood of arriving at the same answer by chance is essentially zero.

Disability Accommodation: to request academic accommodations for a disability, contact the Director of Disability Services, Plaster Student Union, Suite 405, (417) 836-4192 or (417) 836-6792 (TTY), http://www.missouristate.edu/disability. Students are required to provide documentation of disability to Disability Services prior to receiving accommodations. Disability Services refers some types of accommodation requests to the Learning Diagnostic Clinic, which also provides diagnostic testing for learning and psychological disabilities. For information about testing, contact the Director of the Learning Diagnostic Clinic (417-836-4787).

Nondiscrimination: Missouri State University is an equal opportunity/affirmative action institution, and maintains a grievance procedure available to any person who believes he or she has been discriminated against. At all times, it is your right to address inquiries or concerns about possible discrimination to the Office of Equal Opportunity Officer, Siceluff Hall 296, (417) 836-4252. Other types of concerns (i.e., concerns of an academic nature) should be discussed directly with your instructor and can also be brought to the attention of your instructors Department Head.

Laptops: are generally not a good idea in class. I have had a few students with the discipline to use a laptop effectively in class, but in most cases it's a distraction and detrimental to your grades. I reserve the right to require you to turn off a laptop and/or move to a seat in which your laptop screen is not visible to any other student.

Cell Phones: the Office of the Provost prohibits the use by students of cell phones, pagers, PDAs, or similar communication devices during scheduled classes. All such devices must be turned off or put in a silent (vibrate) mode and ordinarily should not be taken out during class. Given the fact that these same communication devices are an integral part of the University’s emergency notification system, an exception to this policy would occur when numerous devices activate simultaneously. When this occurs, students may consult their devices to determine if a university emergency exists. If that is not the case, the devices should be immediately returned to silent mode and put away. See Cell Phone Use in Classrooms for complete policy.