M038/GZ06: Administrivia

Class Staff Office Hours

We provide office hours each week to reserve time specifically to answer student questions. To reach the class staff's offices on the 7th floor during office hours, use the telephone outside the 7th floor hallway to call the staff member's extension (above); the staff member will come to let you in. If you need to speak to a member of the class staff outside office hours, please make an appointment by email in advance.

Grading

The final mark for M038/GZ06 consists of the following components:

In order to be considered complete for M036/GZ06 as per UCL's guidelines, the student must submit (or sit) at least a total of 75% of the above components of the final mark.

Each day on the calendar includes a link to a question about a reading assigned for that day. Students must write a short 200- to 500-word answer to the question, and must turn in this one-pager at the start of the lecture on the day the question appears on the calendar.

All midterm examinations are closed-book. Midterm examinations will focus on material between the previous examination (or start of term, for Midterm 1) and the date of the midterm, but may draw cumulatively on content taught throughout M038/GZ06.

All assigned readings are examinable, including papers presented by students.

Academic Honesty

All courseworks in M038/GZ06, whether one-pager or presentation, are individual courseworks. Every line of prose you submit in a one-pager must have been written by you alone, and every slide in your presentation must have been written by you and your presentation group 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 of course permitted to discuss with one another the content of the assigned readings, but are strictly prohibited from showing their solutions to any one-pager 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 reading with another student, and that discussion influences your one-pager answer, you must state in your solution that you did so, and what the discussion entailed.

Students are of course free to read reference materials found on the Internet (and any other reference materials).

Copying of solutions (prose or presentation) from student to student is a serious infraction; it will result in automatic awarding of zero marks to all students involved, and is viewed by the UCL administration as cheating under the regulations concerning Examination Irregularities (normally resulting in exclusion from all further examinations at UCL). The course staff use extremely accurate plagiarism detection software to compare prose submitted by all students; this software produces color-coded comparisons of prose 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.

Late Work Policy

There are no late days for M038/GZ06.

One-pager answers are due at the start of the lecture in which the corresponding paper is discussed, and must be turned in in hardcopy--not by email. Because there are many assigned readings, one per lecture, falling behind on one-pagers is particularly problematic. In addition, each one-pager is worth so few marks as to make fractional late penalties impractical. For these reasons, one-pagers turned in late will receive zero credit.

Similarly, because all students face the same deadline in preparing their presentations, presentation slides turned in after the posted submission deadline will receive zero credit. The submsission deadline is posted during the entire term--it is up to you to plan accordingly.

If you encounter unforeseen severely extenuating circumstances that interfere with your completion of any coursework for M038/GZ06, please contact the administrator of your degree program immediately to report these extenuating circumstances; the administrator may be able to arrange an extension on coursework in cases where such circumstances can be documented. Chris Neil (ext. 33690) is the administrator for the undergraduate program, Tracy Williams (ext. 37287) is the administrator for the SSE and FSE programs, and Andrew Marriott (ext. 37937) is the administrator for the NCS program.