CSC300 — Assignments

Approaching an Assignment

Start the assignment early; there's generally research required and occasionally a new tool to learn about. Read the hand-out at least once once it is posted, so you can think about any connections with subsequent lectures. Last-minute works usually looks like ... last-minute work.

Independent work

The University of Toronto is a community of scholars who share ideas and insights. As a member of this community, you are expected to give credit to those whose ideas you share. Make a habit of giving generous credit to those you talked to, and to those books, articles, or web pages you consulted, in developing your ideas.

Of course, for grading purposes we need to assign a mark to your individual work. For this reason we have you sit tests and exams under conditions where we can ensure that the answers you provide are your own work. However, with independent work such as programming assignments, we count on you to carefully record and report which portions are your work, and which belong to others. The work you submit for credit must be your own work, and there are serious penalties for passing off other's work as your own (see below). Discussions with TAs or the instructor are exceptions: you may have as many of these as you wish without reporting them.

Each year, especially in first-year courses, the University prosecutes a significant number of students for Academic Offences. You must familiarize yourself with the University's Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters.

Submitting

Assignment postings

• During the latter half of the course you will have a Service Learning assignment. To begin, read over Community Partners for Service Learning submit partner.html to CDF secure site listing (at least) your top three choices, and a paragraph or two describing why you think you'd be suitable for this placement. Although most placements don't start until the second half of the course, some require you to act early (e.g. TB test) to qualify.
• You'll write a scholarly script for this course. Notice that the research plan is due February 3rd. If you're skeptical that a scholarly script on CS is possible, see an earlier script (but don't slavishly copy its form). Although there's no academic credit for producing your script, you might want to check out tools to speak your script
• You'll participate in an online debate for credit in this course. You'll need to begin negotiating teams and starting times early in order to secure the debate of your choice.
• You will contribute new new Wikipedia content for credit in this course. Create a Wikipedia account (top right corner of any Wikipedia page), look over the Computer Science stubs, and get started.
• You will create a screencast to present some CS-related tool, concept, or social effect to your peers. Here's an example of an academy-award level (IMO) screencast, with no sound.