CS 4341/6341: Continuous Algorithms

Teams and teamwork

About teamwork in this course:

Team assignments: forthcoming
You should sit with your team in class and have only one laptop open per team.
In-class (module) exercises:
- It's only fair that you share the part you work on together in class.
- All other module exercises should follow the "empty hands" rule (see below).
- You will submit your own zip file for the module exercises, which will include the parts you worked on in common (in class) and the parts you did yourself.
The empty hands policy for an assignment or module exercise:
- You can discuss the exercise or assignment, perhaps sketching out ideas on a black/whiteboard as a team. Anything sketched out should be at the high level, not at the level of code. Certainly, no team member should show their code to anyone else.
- You cannot take anything digital or physical away from the discussion. That is, no record such as written notes, photo of the black/whiteboard.
- The discussion should occur just once and should completely precede the first line of code or text written for the exercise or assignment. Thus, it is NOT OK to write a whole bunch of code and talk about the code. The entire purpose of the one-time-per-exercise discussion is to talk at the high-level.
- Assignments 1-5:
  - You can collaborate within a team but are restricted to the "empty hands" policy.
  - No sharing of code whatsoever.
  - Submit your own assignments.
- Team project. Each team will propose and submit one joint project. Teams with all grads will be expected to deliver more than mixed grad-undergrad teams, which in turn will be expected to deliver more than a pure-undergrad team.
The one and only goal with having teams is to increase learning. Experience shows that back-and-forth discussion both in class and outside is very helpful in learning. At the same time, teamwork should not become an excuse to replace an individual's effort.
Because teamwork is not about effort reduction, it won't matter whether a team has two or three members.
A note about the code provided in the course: As part of the in-class exercises and some assignments, you will need to work with code I have written. Even though a few offerings of the course have help eliminate bugs, there are likely to be a few. You will need to work around these yourself. Please inform me and I'll do what I can given time constraints. It has not really been an issue in the past.