General

General #

Attendance #

Our class will be offered on campus for both Undergrad (4641) and Grad (7641). Lectures might be recorded IF class has the recording system. Any class that I am able to record [which sometimes does not work even if we have the recording system in place], I will make it available to all students (both undergrad and grad) by the end of the day. The attendance is required for both undergrad and grad. Having students in the class helps me and my students A LOT work with each other for a better environment to facilitate learning. Trust me it will be fun and you will give me a lot of energy to teach better. The fact that you need to listen to the lectures without fast-forwarding me can help you learn the materials much better and you will have the chance to ask questions if you are confused anywhere in the lectures. Also, the class attendance will be counted toward your class participation at the end of semester.

Class Deliverables #

All class deliverables will be handled via Gradescope except quizzes which will be on Canvas. The time span offered to complete the course objectives is plentiful and deadlines will not be extended under any circumstances. To ensure the class is fair for all students, you will receive zero credit for work submitted after the deadline. Regrade requests should be submitted directly on Gradescope within a defined period after grade publication (we will inform you on that; we only provide a 3 day for the regrade request). Should you find yourself in an impasse with the TA responsible for your grading, feel free to contact the head TA or course instructor on Edstem.

Edstem #

Edstem will be the main and only place for the course discussions and announcements. If you have questions, please ask it on Edstem first because 1) other students may have the same question; 2) you will get help much faster.

  • For public homework specific questions, PLEASE use the appropriate TA created mega threads instead of creating a new individual thread.
  • If it’s something you do not like to discuss publicly on Edstem, you can create a private post on Edstem.
  • If the issue you want to discuss is sensitive or you are not comfortable discussing with the whole teaching team in a private post, please create a private post asking us to create a private chat. Either Mahdi or one of the Head TAs will create a private chat for you.
  • Edstem GOOD questions:
    • “I don’t understand this part of the lecture, can you explain it to me?”
    • “This certain part of the hw is not clear to me, would it be possible to explain that more?”
    • “I have a question about the project …”
    • “I found an issue on the website, hw or the lectures, can you clarify …”
    • “Any feedback, suggestions, … would be greatly appreciated.”
    • Historically, most of the questions were good!
  • Edstem BAD questions:
    • “Can you debug my code?”
    • “Can you find where the problem is in my code?”
    • Our team will not do that. You need to be specific about your question

Exceptional Circumstances #

Any request for exceptions to these policies should be made in advance when at all possible. Requests should be due to incapacitating illness, personal emergencies, or similarly serious events. Your request MUST be accompanied by a supporting letter issued by the Dean of Students before contacting us. Once you acquired the letter, please go this Ed Discussion post and fill out the form and ping us on Ed Discussion using a private post that you filled out the form.

The supporting letter from the Dean of Students should be delivered within a week of the assignment due date in order for us to issue accommodations. If the assignment was due over a week ago, we won’t be able to issue accommodations for the assignment.

AI-Based Assistance #

We are using the AI assistant policy developed by David Joyner and shared by other classes at Georgia Tech (CS 7643 Deep Learning). The summary is that you should treat your AI source like a human source, with all accompanying plagiarism implications:

We treat AI-based assistance, such as ChatGPT and Copilot, the same way we treat collaboration with other people: you are welcome to talk about your ideas and work with other people, both inside and outside the class, as well as with AI-based assistants.

However, all work you submit must be your own. You should never include in your assignment anything that was not written directly by you without proper citation (including quotation marks and in-line citation for direct quotes).

Including anything you did not write in your assignment without proper citation will be treated as an academic misconduct case. If you are unsure where the line is between collaborating with AI and copying AI, we recommend the following heuristics:

Heuristic 1: Never hit “Copy” within your conversation with an AI assistant. You can copy your own work into your own conversation, but do not copy anything from the conversation back into your assignment.

Instead, use your interaction with the AI assistant as a learning experience, then let your assignment reflect your improved understanding.

Heuristic 2: Do not have your assignment and the AI agent open at the same time. Similar to the above, use your conversation with the AI as a learning experience, then close the interaction down, open your assignment, and let your assignment reflect your revised knowledge.

This heuristic includes avoiding using AI directly integrated into your composition environment: just as you should not let a classmate write content or code directly into your submission, so also you should avoid using tools that directly add content to your submission.

Deviating from these heuristics does not automatically qualify as academic misconduct; however, following these heuristics essentially guarantees your collaboration will not cross the line into misconduct.