Course Policies
Boston University
Spring 2024

Please read the BU's academic conduct code. This is taken very seriously at BU and I take it seriously in the courses I teach.

I encourage students to work and study in groups, it's a useful way to learn, but when you write down your solutions to an assignment, you should do it from your own memory, without looking at anyone's work. It is just as important that you never let anyone use your work. All parties are culpable in cases of academic misconduct.

If you work with others, consult materials found on the Internet, or use an AI assistant, you should cite your sources. This is a useful skill in any setting, and so I recommend being as conservative as possible regarding what you cite. In any assignment, these citations should appear at the top of the submission (in comments if the submission is code). Some examples:

• I discussed problem 1 and 2 with Leah Smith. She helped me understand X and Y aspects of the problem.
• I saw the stack overflow post stackoverflow.com/questions/6681284/python-numpy-arrays which informed my solution.
• I helped Zihan Guo with problem 4. I told them to try using X.
• I asked chatGPT "what's the largest eigenvalue of this matrix?" but asked it not to show me how to solve for it.

It can be tricky determining when a citation is necessary. When in doubt, err on the side of longer, more descriptive citations. And again, all parties are culpable. Those who share their work with others (this includes sending files and screen sharing) receive the same attention as those who use that work. Please email me immediately if you are unsure about a particular situation.

The line between collaboration, abuse of online resources, and misconduct has become incredibly blurry, and cases are becoming more difficult to navigate. There are obvious prohibitions:

• Don't share your solutions with anyone else
• Don't use the solutions of other students
• Don't ask homework questions online on sites like Stack Overflow
• Don't ask an AI assistant for a solution to a homework question
• Don't consult a solution posted online, even to verify your own

It would be unreasonable to believe that these things never happen, or that I can recognize every case that it happens. But I have to depend on the integrity of all of you (students), which also means that I have to take seriously cases of academic misconduct if they do unfortunately come up. Use your best judgment and remember:

• I and the course staff care about your success in this course. We provide a number of avenues to ask for help, please use them.
• You will have to answer questions on exams without external aids (and in interviews when you apply for a job).
• If you don't know how to start thinking about a problem, it's okay to ask for pointers on how to start in office hours and Piazza. We can't give you any part of the answer, but we may be able to put you in the right direction.
• We build in safe-guards (like dropped homework assignments) in the case you are unable to complete an assignment.

If you require disability accommodations, please contact me as soon as possible. You should provide me with the appropriate documentation, available though BU's Disability and Access Services. If there's a policy you see that I'm failing to comply with, please reach out with suggestions. And if you'd like accommodations that are not covered by existing services or policies, feel free to contact me and we can see what we can do. I want everyone to feel able to fully participate in the course.

My aim is to present material in a way that respects the diversity of the student body. If I fail to do this, please make me aware. Any suggestions are welcomed and appreciated. I also expect students taking any course of mine to appreciate and respect the unique opportunity they have to participate in a diverse student body.

Please read BU's Sexual Misconduct Policy and review the entire page for information about talking to someone confidentially about experiences of sexual misconduct, filing a report, and any other relevant information. Above all, you should feel safe, and able to be productive. If this is not the case, please reach out to me or someone else immediately.

The university is legally obligated to investigate reports of sexual misconduct, and therefore it cannot guarantee the confidentiality of a report, but it will consider a request for confidentiality and respect it to the extent possible. I am also required to report incidents of sexual misconduct and cannot guarantee confidentiality. I must provide our Title IX coordinator with relevant details such as the names of those involved in the incident.

We're going to be talking about the role of AI assistants in education for the next decade, and the truth is that no one knows at this moment what we're going to do about it. You are the first generation that this is impacting, and not just in college, but likely when you leave as well.

This can be a good thing. You have the ability to shape your relationship with these tools (even if that means you choose not to use them, or even to fight against their use). But as this is happening, we still need to run courses at universities.

It would be drastic for me to prohibit the use of AI assistants, but they should not be used to solve homework assignments directly. I've seen some very powerful and creative ways that they have been used to aid learning. Some ideas:

• Ask explicitly for the solution not to be given.
• Ask about high-level ideas, like analogies or mnemonics.
• Ask for explanations about how code works, or why a piece of code is not working.

If you have any other suggestions please let me know. The point is, it's possible to use these tools in productive ways. Remember, they're not perfect, they can be wrong, it can sometimes be easy to tell when a solution was produced by an AI assistant, and you won't have access to them in exams.