Course Policies
“I feel that if we don’t take seriously the ways in which racism is embedded in structures of institutions, if we assume that there must be an identifiable racist who is the perpetrator, then we won’t ever succeed in eradicating racism.” -Angela Davis
Academic Integrity
First of all, be aware of your rights in how the college defines academic integrity and the appeal process in case you’re ever accused of cheating.
As far as our class, we encourage collaboration and learning in community. Such deep collaboration can make it hard to learn when these policies are on your mind. Please know that all the grace and best intention are assumed of you, it is also why our grading and deadline policy are the way they are! I am not in the business of policing and trying to catch you cheating. My purpose is to support your learning.
However, sometimes blatant academic dishonesty happens and our courses are especially easy to find answers for and give into. Should you and/or any involved parties be so obvious, I’ll facilitate a conversation about what got us there and create an action plan on how:
- I can better support you to ensure the challenge of the material is attainable in our time together
- You can reach the learning objective without resorting to shortcuts that cut off learning
Most classes would assign all involved parties a zero and move on. But that means you didn’t reach the learning objective! Instead, like any other graded assignment, I will also provide feedback in that meeting on what is needed for you to still reach that learning objective.
Generative AI Policy
We are living in an explosion of generative AI technology (ChatGPT, GitHub CoPilot, etc.) that has shaken several industries, including education. Like most tools, we work in this class to understand their limitations and how to best apply them to a given problem that factors in a real-world context. The scale for impact is enormous, and again likemost tools can be used for good but is often disastrous because of the systemic barriers and oppression that exists in our society.
As far as this course, you are encouraged to use these tools to support your learning. Examples of this include, but are not limited to:
- generating ideas for projects
- explaining a concept from our course
- explainin line(s) of code
- debugging your code
Can you use these tools to complete projects? Absolutely! But if you love this field, are passionate about the good you can do in society and your future academic/professional goals, I have no doubt that you’re using it for academic dishonesty. Instead, I invite you to share with me and your classmates how you use it to learn. That’ll teach me new ways I haven’t explore and can bring into the classroom too!
Finally, our academic integrity policy above withstanding, the best thing you can do is not trust generative AI. Take everything it says with a grain of salt, be critical and verify its answers. Just like you’re learning in various college classes to research and check trusted sources, it is especially important you do the same with tools like ChatGPT that have been known to have “hallucinations” or perpetuate human biases that we’ve built into them. Bring what you find into our classroom discussions, that’s what a learning environment is meant to do!
Online Etiquette
Are you struggling with the online environment? Are you new to online learning? Regardless of in-person/onground, Zoom, or fully asynchrnous online classes, a lot of your learning is done online! Checkout resources like the Student Support Hub and the Online Help Hut and Student Support Desk. The college has tons of Online Education Resources, like Student Online Academic Readiness (SOAR) 1-hour workshops online and in person throughout the semester.
What about day-to-day studying and participating in class? This guide on “Reshaping Your School Schedule During Remote Instruction” might help. The following are good guidelines for most classes and are expect for any online meetings (like student office hours, etc.) as well:
- Mute your mic if you are not talking/participating. Feel free to turn it on whenever you have a question or would like to answer, this is to minimize background noise.
- Raise your hand (or click the button for it). It really helps keep us organized on Zoom.
- Dress for your online class as you would in your in-person class. Online learning is uncomfortable as it is, we don’t want to see inappropriate videos of each other.
- Be kind to one another. Including yourself! Checkout our Discord for more details.