CS2113/T Website - Admin: B: Module Policies

Policy on following instructions
Policy on grading smaller/larger teams
Policy on project work distribution
Policy on absence due to valid reasons (e.g. MC, LOA, University events)
Policy on email response time
Policy on tech help
Policy on publishing submissions
Policy on plagiarism
Policy on reuse
Policy on help from outsiders
Policy on suggested length for submissions

Policy on following instructions

When working with others, especially in a large class such as CS2113/T, it is very important that you adhere to standards, policies, and instructions imposed on everyone. Not doing so creates unnecessary headaches for everyone and puts your work attitude in a negative light. That is why we penalize repeated violations of instructions. On the other hand we do understand that humans are liable to make mistakes. That is why we only penalize repeated or frequent mistakes.

Policy on grading smaller/larger teams

As most of the work is graded individually, team sizes of 3, 4, or 5 is not expected to affect your grade. While managing larger teams is harder, larger teams have more collective know-how, which can cancel each other.

Policy on project work distribution

As most of the work is graded individually, it is OK to do less or more than equal share in your project team.

Related: [Admin: Project: Scope]

Policy on absence due to valid reasons (e.g. MC, LOA, University events)

There is no need to inform us. If you miss a lecture/tutorial for a valid reason, just do your best to catch up. We'll be happy to help if required. An occasional absence or two is not expected to affect your participation marks.
Only if you fail to earn full marks for participation we will consider giving an alternative avenue to earn marks missed due to the absences.

Policy on email response time

Normally, the prof will respond within 24 hours if it was an email sent to the prof or a forum post directed at the prof. If you don't get a response within that time, please feel free to remind the prof. It is likely that the prof did not notice your post or the email got stuck somewhere.

Similarly we expect you to check email regularly and respond to emails written to you personally (not mass email) promptly.

Not responding to a personal email is a major breach of professional etiquette (and general civility). Imagine how pissed off you would be if you met the prof along the corridor, said 'Hi prof, good morning' and the prof walked away without saying anything back. Not responding to a personal email is just as bad. Always take a few seconds to at least acknowledge such emails. It doesn't take long to type "Noted. Thanks" and hit 'send'.

The promptness of a reply is even more important when the email is requesting you for something that you cannot provide. Imagine you wrote to the prof requesting a reference letter and the prof did not respond at all because he/she did not want to give you one; You'll be quite frustrated because you wouldn't know whether to look for another prof or wait longer for a response. Saying 'No' is fine and in fact a necessary part of professional life; but saying nothing is not acceptable. If you didn't reply, the sender will not even know whether you received the email.

Policy on tech help

Do not expect your tutor to code or debug for you. We strongly discourage tutors from giving technical help directly to their own teams because we want to train you in troubleshooting tech problems yourselves. Allowing direct tech help from tutors transfers the troubleshooting responsibility to tutors.

It is ok to ask for help from classmates even for assignments, even from other teams, as long as you don't copy from others and submit as your own. It doesn't matter who is helping you as long as you are learning from it.

We encourage you to give tech help to each other, but do it in a way that the other person learns from it.

Policy on publishing submissions

The source code are publicly available and are available for reuse by others without any restrictions.
Is publishing submissions unfair to the team? We don't think so. If you were the first to think of something your peers are willing to adopt later, that means you are already ahead of them and they are unlikely to earn more marks by adopting your ideas.

Policy on plagiarism

We encourage sharing, but you should share with everyone in the class, not just a selected group. That is,

You are not allowed to share individual assignments with classmates directly.
You are not allowed to share project-related things with other teams directly.

You can even reuse each other's work subject to the 'reuse policy' given below.

If you submit code (or adopt ideas) taken from elsewhere, you need to comply with our reuse policy.

Detection:

Detecting plagiarism in code is quite easy. You are not fooling anyone by reordering code or renaming methods/variables.
As all your work is publicly visible on GitHub, sooner or later somebody will notice the plagiarism.

Penalties:

For submissions not affecting marks: We make a record of cases of plagiarism but we do not take further action. Such plagiarism does not disadvantage other students. Therefore, we prefer to spend all available resources on helping honest students to do better rather than to chase after dishonest students. If you think you gain something by plagiarizing, go ahead and do it. It's your choice and it's your loss.
For the final project/exam: Any case of claiming others' work as yours will be reported to the university for disciplinary action.

Policy on reuse

Reuse is encouraged. However, note that reuse has its own costs (such as the learning curve, additional complexity, usage restrictions, and unknown bugs). Furthermore, you will not be given credit for work done by others. Rather, you will be given credit for using work done by others.

You are allowed to reuse work from your classmates, subject to following conditions:
- The work has been published by us or the authors.
- You clearly give credit to the original author(s).
You are allowed to reuse work from external sources, subject to following conditions:
- The work comes from a source of 'good standing' (such as an established open source project). This means you cannot reuse code written by an outside 'friend'.
- You clearly give credit to the original author. Acknowledge use of third party resources clearly e.g. in the welcome message, splash screen (if any) or under the 'about' menu. If you are open about reuse, you are less likely to get into trouble if you unintentionally reused something copyrighted.
- You do not violate the license under which the work has been released. Please do not use 3rd-party images/audio in your software unless they have been specifically released to be used freely. Just because you found it in the Internet does not mean it is free for reuse.
- Always get permission from us before you reuse third-party libraries. Please post your 'request to use 3rd party library' in our forum. That way, the whole class get to see what libraries are being used by others.
- This also ensures you learn the ethics to attribute credits to the correct stake holders/owners.

Giving credit for reused work

Given below are how to give credit for things you reuse from elsewhere. These requirements are specific to this module i.e., not applicable outside the module (outside the module you should follow the rules specified by your employer and the license of the reused work)

If you used a third party library:

Mention in the README.adoc (under the Acknowledgements section)
mention in the Project Portfolio Page if the library has a significant relevance to the features you implemented

If you reused code snippets found on the Internet e.g. from StackOverflow answers or
referred code in another software or
referred project code by current/past student:

If you read the code to understand the approach and implemented it yourself, mention it as a comment
Example:

//Solution below adapted from https://stackoverflow.com/a/16252290
{Your implmentation of the reused solution here ...}

If you copy-pasted a non-trivial code block (possibly with minor modifications renaming, layout changes, changes to comments, etc.), also mark the code block as reused code (using @@author tags)
Format:

//@@author {yourGithubUsername}-reused
//{Info about the source...}

{Reused code (possibly with minor modifications) here ...}

//@@author

Example of reusing a code snippet (with minor modifications):

persons = getList()
//@@author johndoe-reused
//Reused from https://stackoverflow.com/a/34646172 with minor modifications
Collections.sort(persons, new Comparator<CustomData>() {
    @Override
    public int compare(CustomData lhs, CustomData rhs) {
        return lhs.customInt > rhs.customInt ? -1 : (lhs.customInt < rhs.customInt) ? 1 : 0;
    }
});
//@@author
return persons;

Adding `@@author` tags to indicate authorship

Mark your code with a //@@author {yourGithubUsername}. Note the double @.
The //@@author tag should indicates the beginning of the code you wrote. The code up to the next //@@author tag or the end of the file (whichever comes first) will be considered as was written by that author. Here is a sample code file:
```
//@@author johndoe
method 1 ...
method 2 ...
//@@author sarahkhoo
method 3 ...
//@@author johndoe
method 4 ...
```
If you don't know who wrote the code segment below yours, you may put an empty //@@author (i.e. no GitHub username) to indicate the end of the code segment you wrote. The author of code below yours can add the GitHub username to the empty tag later. Here is a sample code with an empty author tag:
```
method 0 ...
//@@author johndoe
method 1 ...
method 2 ...
//@@author
method 3 ...
method 4 ...
```
The author tag syntax varies based on file type e.g. for java, css, fxml. Use the corresponding comment syntax for non-Java files.
Here is an example code from an xml/fxml file.
```

<textbox>
  <label>...</label>
  <input>...</input>
</textbox>
...
```

Do not put the //@@author inside java header comments.
👎

/**
  * Returns true if ...
  * @@author johndoe
  */

👍

//@@author johndoe
/**
  * Returns true if ...
  */

What to and what not to annotate

Annotate both functional and test code There is no need to annotate documentation files.
Annotate only significant size code blocks that can be reviewed on its own e.g., a class, a sequence of methods, a method.
Claiming credit for code blocks smaller than a method is discouraged but allowed. If you do, do it sparingly and only claim meaningful blocks of code such as a block of statements, a loop, or an if-else statement.
- If an enhancement required you to do tiny changes in many places, there is no need to annotate all those tiny changes; you can describe those changes in the Project Portfolio page instead.
- If a code block was touched by more than one person, either let the person who wrote most of it (e.g. more than 80%) take credit for the entire block, or leave it as 'unclaimed' (i.e., no author tags).
- Related to the above point, if you claim a code block as your own, more than 80% of the code in that block should have been written by yourself. For example, no more than 20% of it can be code you reused from somewhere.
- 💡 GitHub has a blame feature and a history feature that can help you determine who wrote a piece of code.
Do not try to boost the quantity of your contribution using unethical means such as duplicating the same code in multiple places. In particular, do not copy-paste test cases to create redundant tests. Even repetitive code blocks within test methods should be extracted out as utility methods to reduce code duplication. Individual members are responsible for making sure code attributed to them are correct. If you notice a team member claiming credit for code that he/she did not write or use other questionable tactics, you can email us (after the final submission) to let us know.
If you wrote a significant amount of code that was not used in the final product,
- Create a folder called {project root}/unused
- Move unused files (or copies of files containing unused code) to that folder
- use //@@author {yourGithubUsername}-unused to mark unused code in those files (note the suffix unused) e.g.
```
//@@author johndoe-unused
method 1 ...
method 2 ...
```
Please put a comment in the code to explain why it was not used.
If you reused code from elsewhere, mark such code as //@@author {yourGithubUsername}-reused (note the suffix reused) e.g.
```
//@@author johndoe-reused
method 1 ...
method 2 ...
```
You can use empty @@author tags to mark code as not yours when RepoSense attribute the to you incorrectly.
- Code generated by the IDE/framework, should not be annotated as your own.
- Code you modified in minor ways e.g. adding a parameter. These should not be claimed as yours but you can mention these additional contributions in the Project Portfolio page if you want to claim credit for them.

At the end of the project each student is required to submit a Project Portfolio Page.

Objective:
- For you to use (e.g. in your resume) as a well-documented data point of your SE experience
- For us to use as a data point to evaluate your,
  - contributions to the project
  - your documentation skills
Sections to include:
- Overview: A short overview of your product (can use the product introduction you wrote earlier) to provide some context to the reader.
- Summary of Contributions:
  - Code contributed: Give a link to your code on Project Code Dashboard, which should be https://nuscs2113-ay1920s1.github.io/dashboard/#=undefined&search=github_username_in_lower_case (replace github_username_in_lower_case with your actual username in lower case e.g., johndoe). This link is also available in the Project List Page -- linked to the icon under your photo.
  - Features implemented: A summary of the features you implemented. If you implemented multiple features, you are recommended to indicate which one is the biggest feature.
  - Other contributions:
    - Contributions to project management e.g., setting up project tools, managing releases, managing issue tracker etc.
    - Evidence of helping others e.g. responses you posted in our forum, bugs you reported in other team's products,
    - Evidence of technical leadership e.g. sharing useful information in the forum
- Relevant descriptions/terms/conventions: Include all relevant details necessary to understand the document, e.g., conventions, symbols or labels introduced by you, even if it was not introduced by you.
- Contributions to the User Guide: Reproduce the parts in the User Guide that you wrote. This can include features you implemented as well as features you propose to implement.
  The purpose of allowing you to include proposed features is to provide you more flexibility to show your documentation skills. e.g. you can bring in a proposed feature just to give you an opportunity to use a UML diagram type not used by the actual features.
- Contributions to the Developer Guide: Reproduce the parts in the Developer Guide that you wrote. Ensure there is enough content to evaluate your technical documentation skills and UML modelling skills. You can include descriptions of your design/implementations, possible alternatives, pros and cons of alternatives, etc.
- If you plan to use the PPP in your Resume, you can also include your SE work outside of the module (will not be graded)
Format:
- File name: [TEAM_ID]-[Your Name]PPP.pdf e.g., [AY1920S1-CS2113T-F10-3][John Doe]PPP.pdf
- Use one-half spacing between the lines for legibility
- Follow this example. A PDF version of the same has been uploaded on LumiNUS.
- 💡 You are free to choose any (collaborative) software to write the documents. However, try to follow the format of the sample user guide, developer guide and PPP given.
- Do note that extra effort is needed in duplicating and maintaining consistency across UG/DG and PPP. This is a cost of not using automated document generation.
- It is assumed that all contents in the PPP were written primarily by you. If any section is written by someone else e.g. someone else described the feature in the User Guide but you implemented the feature, clearly state that the section was written by someone else (e.g. Start of Extract [from: User Guide] written by Jane Doe). Reason: Your writing skills will be evaluated based on the PPP

Page limit:

Content	Limit
Overview + Summary of contributions	0.5-1 (soft limit)
Contributions to the User Guide	2-4 (soft limit)
Contributions to the Developer Guide	3-5 (soft limit)
Total	5-8 (strict)

Reason for page limit: These submissions are peer-graded (in the PE) which needs to be done in a limited time span.
If you have more content than the limit given above, you can give a representative samples of UG and DG that showcase your documentation skills. Those samples should be understandable on their own. For the parts left-out, you can give an abbreviated version and refer the reader to the full UG/DG for more details.
It's similar to giving extra details as appendices; the reader will look at the UG/DG if the PPP is not enough to make a judgment. For example, when judging documentation quality, if the part in the PPP is not well-written, there is no point reading the rest in the main UG/DG. That's why you need to put the most representative part of your writings in the PPP and still give an abbreviated version of the rest in the PPP itself. Even when judging the quantity of work, the reader should be able to get a good sense of the quantity by combining what is quoted in the PPP and your abbreviated description of the missing part. There is no guarantee that the evaluator will read the full document.

Policy on help from outsiders

In general, you are not allowed to involve outsiders in your project except your team members and the teaching team. However, It is OK to give your product to others for the purpose of getting voluntary user feedback. It is also OK to learn from others as long as they don't do your project work themselves.

Policy on suggested length for submissions

We don't usually give a strict page limit for documents such as User Guide and the Developer Guide. You need to decide yourself how long the document should be based on the purpose and the intended audience. You can determine the level of details required based on the samples we provide.

B: Module Policies