Instructor:
We provide office hours each week to reserve time specifically to answer students' questions. In Fall 2023, office hours will be some combination of in person and online in Zoom. On days when there is a Zoom office hours session, you will find a Zoom link on that day in the 0133 calendar page.
Both in-person and in Zoom, we will see students in first-come, first-served order during an office hours session. On Zoom, when you join the office hours session, you will initially be in the Zoom meeting's waiting room. While Zoom won't show you who else is waiting, or where you are in the queue, Zoom does keep track of the order in which students arrive in the waiting room. The instructor or TA holding office hours will invite you to meet when it is your turn. Please be patient; there can at times be multiple students waiting to be seen.
We ask that to the extent possible, students seek help during the regularly scheduled office hours sessions offered each week. If you need to speak to a member of the class staff outside office hours because you cannot attend either of the regularly scheduled sessions, please request an appointment by private Piazza message to the Instructors.
The final mark for 0133 consists of the following components:
All courseworks in 0133, whether programming or problem set, are individual courseworks. Every line of code or prose you submit must have been written by you alone, and must not be a reproduction of the work of others--whether from the work of students in the class from this year or prior years, from the Internet, or elsewhere.
Students are permitted to discuss with one another the definition of a problem posed in the coursework, but not the details or code for a solution. Students are strictly prohibited from showing their solutions to any problem (in code or prose) to a student from this year or in future years. In accordance with academic practice, students must cite all sources used; thus, if you discuss a problem with another student, you must state in your solution that you did so, and what the discussion entailed.
Students are free to read reference materials found on the Internet (and any other reference materials), so long as they are not directed toward solving the specific problem set as coursework. Students may of course use any code the instructors have provided. Asking for assistance in solving coursework on any Internet forum (e.g., StackExchange, or any other similar site) other than the class Piazza site is absolutely prohibited, and will be treated as a severe infraction equivalent to copying of solutions. No warnings will be given.
Copying of solutions (code or prose) from student to student is a serious infraction; it will result in automatic awarding of zero marks to all students involved, and constitutes cheating under UCL's academic regulations. Penalties can in certain cases result in expulsion from UCL. The course staff use extremely accurate plagiarism detection software to compare code submitted by all students; this software sees through attempted obfuscations such as renaming of variables and reformatting, and compares the actual parse trees of the code, to produce color-coded comparisons of code for all pairs of students in the class. You have been warned--you will be caught and UCL's rules enforced if you cheat.
If you have any questions about the academic honesty rules above, you are encouraged to consult an instructor.
In Fall 2023, 0133 will follow the standard UCL late coursework policy. Note that 0133 is a "Level 7" module, and so the rules for Level 7 modules apply.
Start the courseworks early! They are intended to be challenging, and require many hours of effort (debugging distributed systems is hard). If you do not begin a coursework immediately after it is handed out, you will likely run out of time to complete it before the deadline. If you have questions for the instructor about a coursework, the only way you can get such assistance in time is by starting the coursework early.
All courseworks, both programming and problem sets, are submitted electronically via GitHub, and can thus be submitted 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The class staff for 0133 cannot grant extensions to coursework deadlines. UCL's regulations stipulate that when students encounter severe difficulties that interfere with the timely completion of coursework, students should formally apply for Extenuating Circumstances (ECs). An independent panel of CS academics reviews applications for ECs, and can grant an extension to a deadline when they deem one is warranted, as determined by the severity of the circumstances and the evidence the student provides to support the application.
If you believe circumstances beyond your control are interfering materially with the completion of your work, you should apply for Extenuating Circumstances as early as possible. Note that the department may not be able to grant an extension if you only apply for ECs after the deadline. Please notify the instructors by private Ed Discussion post if you apply for ECs, and notify them by private Ed Discussion post as well if your ECs application is approved.