There are several rules for Scott’s classes, about the following things: Attendance, Collegiality, Questions & Stupidity, Meetings, Formalities, Email, Plagiarism & Academic Dishonesty.
The required legalistic university and departmental boilerplate can be found at Boilerplate.
Attendance. Attendance is expected at all class meetings. I will not take attendance, you can bet that I will notice if you don’t come, or if you routinely show up late. If I do notice, I will not look upon it kindly. Failing to come to class is a surefire way to attract the annoyance and ire of your professors. As with a great many aspects of in life in graduate school (and “in the real world”), you get no credit for showing up. And while you aren’t explicitly penalized for failing to show up, the penalty sure comes. tl;dr: come to every class, on time.
Collegiality. We will be dealing with conceptually and practically challenging material this semester. It will come to some of you more easily than others. Some of you have more preparation in “theory” or in coding than others, and I understand that. Please treat your colleagues, and their opinions, experiences, challenges, difficulties, and especially their ignorance, with the care and respect they deserve. We are all here to learn, so please also be considerate of the project of learning: do not shame other students, and before you offer an argument or opinion or (especially) your personal reaction, ask yourself what you would like to teach the class with, about, or by it. (It will never go amiss if you actually tell us what you’d like to teach the class when you share a reaction.) Also: it’s really okay to be oppositional and argumentative, but please be sure that your opposition and argument are pedagogical. Also also: especially with the material we’re covering in lab this semester, but very generally, please feel encouraged always to simply say, “I don’t get x.”
Questions (and stupidity). Contrary to popular cliché, there are such things as stupid questions. But we all do ask them, sometimes. And that’s OK! I aim for an atmosphere where even stupid questions—and stupid statements—are treated with respect, and where everybody feels licensed to say anything. If somebody (including me!) says something obviously wrong, or airheaded, or clumsy, or whatever—it is right and appropriate to say something non-judgmentally corrective. That’s actually the hard thing: correcting or disagreeing with somebody in a manner that is both intellectually rigorous and not judgmental. It’s hard, but necessary, and expected, and generalizable.
Meetings with faculty. I want to stress this as emphatically as I know how: your faculty are a resource to you not only during class time but also during office hours. In this case, if you can’t make my regular office hours, email me to make an appointment to meet sometime when you can. If, outside of class time, it is onerous to you to make it to campus, I will consider arranging phone or Skype meetings (this is why I have regular Skype office hours). I am requiring you all to meet with me at least once, but I promise you that meeting with me outside of class will improve your performance in and enjoyment of the course. As graduate students, you are entitled to 40 minutes of my time at a go, but please be respectful of my time and other students’ needs and only sign up for 20 if you think your questions can be handled in that time frame.
Formalities. Please call me Scott. If it makes you more comfortable, you may address me as Professor or Dr. Richmond. In no circumstance am I either Mr. Richmond (“I didn’t spend six years in evil graduate school to be called Mr. Evil!”) or, simply, Professor. If you address me only as professor, I will respond in kind, calling you “Student.” Please also write emails to me in polite form, with a salutation, complete English sentences, etc. These do not have to be especially formal, but they do have to meet basic professional standards. I will helpfully (and hopefully in a non-shaming way) point out when your email etiquette goes awry.
Email. As a general rule, I try to respond to emails that I deem response-worthy within 24 hours; you have the right to one within 48 hours. (Unlike some professors, however, I occasionally take weekends, so if you email me on Friday afternoon, you may not get a response until the end of the day on Monday. The same goes for when I’m away at conferences.) As we are also using Slack this semester for communication, some of the formalities may fall away, but please do remember that you are in a professional (and professionalizing) space, whether physical or virtual.
The bar for response-worthy emails is fairly high with me; e.g. I will not respond to emails telling me that you will miss class, unless you ask more or less pointed questions. Pointed questions do not include “what did I miss, and how can I make it up?” The answer to that question always this: make sure you did the reading carefully and closely; make sure you have read all the blog posts and comments; make sure you contact your fellow students asking them to tell you what happened; then, if you still have questions or would like to talk about the material, come see me in office hours.
Generally speaking, and especially if it’s a time-sensitive matter, if I take longer than I outline here, you are well within polite expectation—are even encouraged—to send a nudging email reminding me I owe you something after the usual window.
Plagiarism and academic dishonesty. There’s a section on this in the bureaucratic boilerplate, but this is important stuff: I do not tolerate plagiarism or academic dishonesty. Not even a little bit, of any kind. I should not have to say this, and you should not have to hear me say this. But: no matter how seemingly insignificant, any plagiarism (or other academic dishonesty) of any kind at any point in the course will result in the following: (a) a failing grade for the course, and (b) I will report you to the department. This is serious business. Even—especially—given that most of our writing will be bloggy. The rules may seem a bit different given the more casual style of writing on blogs, although I assure you the principle is the same: do not represent somebody else’s thought or writing as your own, under any circumstances. Links often take the place of proper citations, but you’ll also write regular citations. Please email me if you have any questions at all about any of this. Embarrassment really is the lesser of two evils here.
Meanwhile, as far as coding goes, you will be able to google up solutions to your problems. In fact, all the work you do this semester—coding and writing—will be open to the public. (We will talk about this; you may also wish to consider the matter further.) We will talk about how to manage this, but it will be effectively impossible for me to detect “plagiarized” code. A lot of the time, if you’re stuck, googling around is the way you’re going to hack it through; and in fact, in certain circumstances, it’s a great idea to copy code from one source or another. But working through things on your own is really what you ought to be doing, if you’re going to learn the things.