In general, we ask that you be reasonable and follow the common sense and academic conduct guidelines as in all other classes. There are a few issues that are unique to this class, since it involves larger scale projects and team work.
The general principle: if you’re unsure of something, ask for a clarification.
Contents
Grading
We like to separate assessment and feedback. But you might care about the former. If its any consolation, the average/median grades in this class historically been very high. You are graded against expectations, not against other students. If you do awesome work, you get an A. Even if others do even more awesome work.
The main aspect of your grade are your projects. Your projects will be weighted by the length of the project (tentatively this is 3,4 and 6 weeks for the 3 projects). We may make adjustments based on circumstances (if you have some issue come up that hurts your performance on one of the project, we may weight that one lower). Note that project grades are based on the whole project performance (including early milestones), not just the final results.
All other aspects of this class are lumped under “participation” – in fact, even the class assignments are considered participation (since they will usually be used as part of class discussions). At the end of the semester, we will combine quantitative metrics (include attendance, but also metrics from the online forum) with our subjective opinion of your participation. This participation will be used to adjust the grade determined by your projects. We may reduce your final grade by up to a full letter grade if you are consistently below our expectations (e.g. never participate in discussions, blow off lots of assignments). We may raise your grade if you are a particularly valuable contributor to the class. (usually, students who are valuable contributors also do awesome projects, so this is not an issue).
For projects, groups get the same grade for the group parts, although there may be individual aspects of the projects (such as per-person reflections). See collaboration policy.
Attendance and Participation
A big part of this class is to work collaboratively to learn. Also, much of the content comes only in-class. Some if this is because we avoid too much out of class work (like reading) so you can focus on projects. Some of this is that some topics are best learned through discussion and thinking.
In class participation is difficult to assess and very subjective. It also can be difficult for some people. For example, if you are shy and/or not a native speaker, you may be less comfortable contributing to a class discussion. For this reason, we allow online participation in the forums to supplement your in-class participation. If you feel like you aren’t contributing in class, be sure to make up for it online!
In general, we require you to come to class and participate. While we may try to keep score a little bit (e.g. taking attendance, counting contributions), the subjective impression of the course staff is more important. The class is large enough that not everyone will be able to participate in the discussion all the time – but everyone should make some effort to contribute.
Generally, it is a good idea for you to inform us if you will miss class. Please send email to the TA and the instructor.
It is worse to show up and not participate. In particular, if you come to class and just use it as a time to catch up on your online chores without paying attention, not only do you not get anything out of class, but you detract from the experience of others.
I will allow students to use mobile computing devices in class (as they have many legitimate uses). However, I reserve the right to demand that you prove that your use of a device in class is legitimate, and to revoke your privilege if you abuse it. For example, we sometimes demanded that students that were taking notes online in class show them to the professor.
Readings
There are no required textbooks.
We will provide you with readings online. Some of the readings will be in a protected course reader (with controlled access for students in this class). Note: we put things in the protected reader to honor copyright restrictions that allow only to provide documents for class use. Please do not redistribute them.
Due times and Late Policies
In general, our goal is to give you as much time as possible to do great work, subject to the constraint that we need to have time to look at it, and it might be important for some next step. For example: We’ll ask you to do readings and exercises before a lecture where they will be discussed. We’ll ask you to turn in your project before the demonstration where it will be evaluated. This will sometimes add some additional constraints (we’ll need to read over comments before lecture so we can work them into the discussion, …)
So:
- Each assignment/project component will have an explicit due date and time. Generally, there will be a reason for that (even if its just “we want you to be done with it so you can move on to the next thing”).
- If a time isn’t given, then the deadline is the day. If the deadline is Thursday, then the assignment is due Thursday. That means not Friday. (12:01am Friday is not Thursday).
- Anything turned in late will be noted. It will be penalized if it effects evaluation. If you turn something in too late for a demo, or after we read the assignments, we will note that you did something, but we may not be able to make alternate arrangements.
- If you are consistently late (or otherwise do not follow direction) it will effect your grade.
Collaboration
Working together is a major piece of this class. See the Collaboration Policy for some discussion.
All of the projects in this class will require you to work in a group that we assign. See the “why groups” page for info. If you don’t like this (or think that your schedule or personality might make it difficult for you to work in this arrangement), you might consider not taking this class – it’s a central part of the class.
Friday lab sessions
We have found it immensely valuable to have class “lab sessions” – whether its for tutorials, playtests (sessions where we each play each others games), or even just shared work time where people work with others around (so people can learn from each other, get a sense of what each other is doing, etc). Some of these sessions will be pretty essential (for example, project demos), while others are less so (the shared work times).
Unfortunately, this class does not have a formally scheduled lab. We will use Fridays 2:30-3:45 for the shared lab time. If you have a recurring commitment in this time slot and know you won’t be able to come at all, please inform the Professor at the beginning of the semester.
Computing Environment Policy
This class has been assigned to the “Windows Computing Labs” in 1358 and 1366 Computer Sciences. You are free to work on whatever other computers you have access to. However, all demonstrations must run on the machines in those labs (unless other arrangements are made).
For assignments that run in a web browser: you may specify which major browser your assignment works best with. You do not need to make your project cross-browser, but it must run in some browser available in 1358/1366 CS. Be sure to specify which.
In general: if it doesn’t run in 1358/1366, it doesn’t count as running.
We make no requirements as to what tools that you use. For some of the assignments, we may add requirements (like they must run in a web browser, or be written in a particular language). We will grant exceptions to this policy only in rare (and pre-arranged) circumstances.
Your Intellectual Property and Ownership
All of your work in this class may be presented to others, and therefore it is difficult for you to retain “ownership” of certain aspects of it. We therefore encourage you to consider your contributions (including projects) to class as being given to the class, which means you may not want to use things that you consider particularly valuable. While the actual legal technicalities are probably more complex, you should probably consider any idea or code you contribute to class (either in discussion or handed in as part of a project or assignment) as being placed into the public domain.
For example:
- If you have an idea for a game that you think is really awesome and want to start a company so you can get rich and famous from it, you might not want to use it in class (since others will see it, and you can’t prevent them from building it too).
- If you’ve built some software outside of class, you really shouldn’t “bring it to class” unless you really are giving it to everyone.
For these reasons, we will discourage people in bringing code and ideas they’ve been working on outside of class – and may even require you to explicitly release code or designs to the public domain.
Intellectual Property of Others
You must respect the intellectual property of others. This should go without saying, but it really comes up in a games class.
You may only use things that (not only) do you have legal license to use, but also that you have legal license to give to others in the class. This is particularly an issue with artistic resources: you need to be careful if you download a piece of music, copy a piece of artwork, use the characters or stories from a book, etc. If you use something, make sure you are using it legally, and give it proper attribution.
Another issue is that you must be sure that the things you use (art and code) are things that are legal for you to use in the class setting. We are aware of some software (the Unity game engine, for instance) that are free for personal use, but class is not personal use. There is a similar issue with the Autodesk content creation tools (e.g. Maya and 3D Studio Max), but the CS department has licenses for these.
Online work:
We will use online mechanisms for many aspects of this class. This is important because it is not only how you will share your work with us, but also because it is how you will interact with other students. Interaction with other students is a central component of this class. Some specific elements of this:
- Many of your assignments will require you to post things on the online discussion forum so that course staff (and other students) can see them. In fact, some of your online assignments will require you to give feedback to your classmates.
- Part of your “participation” in this class is to contribute to the online forums.
- Your projects for the class need to be posted online so they can be accessed from the web so that course staff and fellow students can look at it. We will give you mechanisms to restrict access (although we encourage you to make it visible to the world).
There are some privacy rules about student work (FERPA) that might apply to these things. Actual compliance is a complicated thing. For reasons of fairness:
- No grading information from the course staff will be given in either the online discussion forum, or on the web. We may send unofficial grading information to you by email.
- The online discussion forum will be restricted to class members only.
- You will be given the option of restricting access to your projects on the web. Unfortunately, the default mechanism is to restrict the pages to any person with a valid CS user account (not just people in the class). This is usually not an issue (since other people don’t necessarily want to look at things), but if you are uncomfortable with it, we can try to make other arrangements.
- Your projects may be shown to others after the end of the class. If you prefer that we do not show your projects to people outside of the class (for example, to students in future editions of the class), please let us know and we will archive your project at the end of the semester.
- If you feel that we are not adequately protecting your rights (from FERPA), we will allow you to opt out of online participation. However, you must notify the Professor ahead of time, and make alternate arrangements.
Misuse of the online mechanisms of this class will not be tolerated. We reserve the right to remove inappropriate contributions to the online forums.
