AY2024/25 Semester 1
Course Information - Policies

Correspondence

Information is disseminated to you mainly through this course website and Canvas. It is your responsibility to check Canvas regularly for announcements and course website for course materials. We will refrain from sending mass emails unless it is of grave urgency.

For queries on general matters, we prefer that you post them on the Canvas forums. This would allow others -- staff, seniors and your fellow classmates -- to help answer your queries. Discussion can also be more lively and extensive in a forum than through private email exchange.

Please use emails only for private matters. Please be informed that if you send emails to us, we only recognise your OFFICIAL email address, that is, address with domain @comp.nus.edu.sg or @u.nus.edu, otherwise we would require authentication such as your name and matriculation number.

We will send emails only to your official email address at @nus.edu.sg. If you have set an auto-forwarding service to other external mail server, you must ensure that the mail server in use is reliable, otherwise emails from us will not reach you on time, or even reach you at all.

If you have queries pertaining to your own tutorial group or lab group, please email your respective tutor or lab TA. Their email addresses are available on the Staff page.

We reserve the right to publish our answers to your private queries to the class (on Canvas or email) if we feel that they are of interest and benefit to the class.

Notes and Handouts

To reduce wastage of papers, all course materials are available for download on Canvas and this course website.

Attendance and Make-up Class

Attendance for tutorial will be monitored. Occasionally, quiz may be conducted during the tutorial. You must be present at the lab to complete your lab experiment.

You should stick to your allocated tutorial group and lab group. No switching of group is allowed after the tutorial registration period. If you have valid reason to miss a lesson and wish to join another group for make-up, please inform your respective tutor (for tutorial) or lab TA (for lab) at least two days in advance if possible.

A student who is absent from his or her assigned class without acceptable reason will not be allowed to attend another class for make-up.

If you have missed a tutorial/lab due to illness, please inform your tutor/labTA and submit your medical certificate (either softcopy or hardcopy) to him/her. If you are going to miss a tutorial/lab due to some valid reason such as a prior engagement, please inform your tutor/labTA and submit documentary proof to him/her in advance.

On the attendance records, a '1' means presence, '0' means absence, 'MC' means medical certificate, and 'EX' means excused with valid reason.

Preparation for Class

You are to be prepared before you attend your tutorial and lab lessons. For tutorials, you are to get the answers ready before the lesson. For labs, you are to read the lab instructions, and prepare part of your reports before you come to the lab.

Late Submission of Assignments

Submission deadlines of assignments must be strictly adhered to and late submissions without valid reason will not be accepted.

Plagiarism

We permit and encourage healthy discussion among students. However, students must draw the line between discussion and plagiarism (copying of other's work or taking credit for a piece of work that is not original).

The university does not condone plagiarism. If detected, both the party who copied and the party who had permitted the copying will be penalised equally.

Please refer to Plagiarism site for more information.

Be Serious in Your Study

All these seemingly 'harsh' policies and rules are to be taken in the right light. In a small class, we do not need to spell these out explicitly as we can easily monitor the situation. However for a big class, we need these policies to maintain uniformity and fairness as much as we can, and to ensure the smooth running of the course. If everybody cooperates, your tutors will be relieved of many unnecessary tasks and hence can devote more quality time on you.

But this is not a one-way traffic. We welcome your comments and suggestions, if you spot any possibility for improvements. Just drop us an e-mail or pop by our offices for a chat.