Illness

Please be considerate of others and do not come to campus if you are sick. You can keep up with the course in the following ways:

  • Look at the course calendar to see where we expect to be at the end of each lecture.
  • Read the commentary in the study modules for those lectures.
  • View the live-streamed lecture on MS Teams at 4:00-5:20pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
  • There is no direct way to keep up with tutorials other than attend. They focus on the development process, which is also a major focus of office hours; make use of office hours. If you’re sick, visit office hours on MS Teams .
  • Do the assignments, as usual.

If you’re really sick…

A medical note may not be accepted. It may have been forged, bought, or the doctor may not be aware of our standards. A medical note does not cause course staff to suspend judgement.

With appropriate, authorized documentation, assignments and midterm exams may be excused. In general, you should follow the Math Faculty’s policy and submit a Verification of Illness form. Email a copy of that form to the Instructional Support Coordinator with a subject of “CS135 X illness” where “X” is replaced with the appropriate assignment (eg A03) or midterm (eg MT1).

Assignments

If a missed assignment is excused, its weight is distributed proportionately to the weights of the remaining assignments. It is highly recommended that the assignment still be attempted for learning and understanding. Submit to MarkUs (even after the deadline) and email cs135@uwaterloo.ca to ask the ISAs to mark for feedback.

In a course with as many students as CS135, we are not able to give extensions.

Midterm Exams

The policy for midterm exams is essentially the same as for assignments except that the weight is distributed over the remaining exams (including the final).

Final Exam

We do not have make-up exams. If you are ill and cannot write the final, we will assign one of the following marks:

  • INComplete, in cases where the illness is accepted and we believe the student could plausibly pass the course based on other work done in the term. The student will be required to write the final exam with the next term’s CS135 class (for Fall term students, this would be the following Winter term and for Winter term students, this would be the following Fall term since CS135 is not offered Spring terms). The ISC makes the arrangements. Note that successor courses (e.g. CS136) may not be taken until CS135 is passed.
  • DNW (Did Not Write), in cases where medical documentation is not provided or we reject it, or we do not believe the student could plausibly pass the course.

Limits on Excused Assessments

At some point we simply do not have enough information to assign a grade. Students with more than three excused assignments or more than one excused exam will be given an INComplete (provided we believe, based on the work we do have, that they could plausibly pass the course).