Policies#

The course-wide rules for attendance, late work, extensions, reflections and academic integrity.

Attendance#

Lectures establish the baseline; Labs are where the week’s material gets used and the gaps show up. Life happens — illness, a competing deadline, a week where everything else took priority — and a single missed Lab needs no explanation. A pattern of missed Labs is treated as something worth a conversation with your tutor about what’s going on, not a mark deduction on its own.

Submission#

Weekly Reflections and Assignments 1 through 3 are submitted on paper, handed either to the Convenor at their office or to your tutor. Blank paper and envelopes are supplied continuously throughout the semester through the same two channels — running out is not a reason to miss a deadline. Whoever takes your submission dates and initials it on the spot; that is the timestamp the Late work policy below uses. Paper submission is also stated policy for making sure every student can find their way to a building that isn’t their bedroom at least once a semester.

Weekly Reflections carry one additional rule: seal the reflection in an envelope regardless of which of the two you use to hand it in. Your tutor is still the only person who reads it, whether it reaches them directly or by way of the Convenor’s office.

In extenuating circumstances — accessibility needs, illness, travel, or being off campus — email submission is permitted instead, accompanied by supporting documentation. Send it to the Convenor or your tutor, the same two channels as paper — except a Weekly Reflection, which goes to your tutor alone, keeping the same confidentiality the sealed envelope provides. This changes how you submit, not when it is due: request an extension separately if the same circumstance also costs you time. An email with no documentation attached is not accepted as a submission; it is treated as a missed submission under the Late work policy below.

This page’s submission rules do not cover the Final Exam, which is submitted under its own conditions.

Late work and extensions#

A short extension on any assessment is available on request, before the deadline, no justification required: email the relevant tutor and state the new date you need. Work submitted late without an extension loses 5% of the available mark per calendar day, to a maximum of five days, after which the assessment is treated as a missed submission and referred to the Convenor for a decision. For a paper submission, the clock runs from the date recorded when it was handed in — see Submission above.

Reflections#

Weekly Reflections run on a fixed schedule: one prompt per teaching week, due the following Tuesday. The two lowest-scoring reflections in the semester are dropped before the running total is calculated, which absorbs two bad weeks — illness, a missed prompt, a reflection that did not land — without a separate extension process. A reflection submitted after its deadline and without an extension is one of the weeks this rule is built to catch; ask for the extension instead.

Academic integrity#

Submitted work must be your own account of your own habits: your hygiene schedule, your wardrobe, your sleep schedule, your budget. Describing a routine you have not actually run, or reporting compliance you cannot evidence, is treated as fabricated data and referred under the university’s academic integrity policy. Discussing your approach with classmates is expected and encouraged; submitting their data as your own is not.

Content and disclosure#

This course is written as satire, and the target is the culture that treats sleep, hygiene, conversation and money as beneath a computer science curriculum — not of the students who were never taught them. If a week’s framing reads as pointed, it is pointed at that culture.

Reflections are personal by design, and they are never read aloud in a lecture, a Lab, or anywhere else: your tutor reads what you submit, marks it against the stated criteria, and it stays there. Week 9’s reflection asks for more disclosure than the others, so it is optional — skipping it costs you nothing beyond the mark for that single prompt, which the drop-lowest rule above may absorb anyway.

If any part of this course asks for more than you want to share, submit what you are comfortable submitting and say so; a partial, honest reflection marks better than a complete one you regret sending.