Policies

Attendance and Participation: Because this class includes a lot of in-class discussion, demonstration, and work, you're expected to attend all classes. You're allowed three absences during the semester. I don't distinguish between "excused" and "unexcused" absences in this course, so you may want to save up your absences for good reasons.

On days you're not in class, you're expected to turn in any work that's due (see Due Date policy below). You'll probably lose credit for any in-class work.

Due Dates: Assignments listed as due in class on the schedule are due at the start of class. Late assignments are penalized 10% per class day late. For example, a draft of a website due on Thursday in class would be penalized 10% if you submit it at the end of class (or at 5 pm on that day or the next Monday afternoon). There may be additional implications if an assignment due is also being reviewed by your team during class (in which case you may also lose points for not having a document to get feedback on).

Academic Honest, Plagiarism, and Intellectual Property: The three terms above are related but not the same. "Academic honesty" is probably the most important one: That means that work you turn in and claim as your own should actually be your own. My job is to help you learn basic web design principles and techniques and to assess how well you've learned them. I can't accurately assess your learning if your turning in someone else's work and pretending it's your own (an act that goes by the term "plagiarism," as you probably already know). In some cases, I'll allow (or even require) you to use pre-existing work (such as clipart or stock photography) for a project. The thing to keep in mind is what I'm assessing in a project: If an assignment asks you to create a banner from scratch in Photoshop, don't use clipart.

If you violate academic honesty in ways that seem intentional (in other words, obviously dishonest), you'll be referred to the University's committee on academic honesty.

"Intellectual Property" is only slightly related to academic honesty and plagiarism. IP is a legal construct that protects the rights of creators of content ("authors") to profit from that content in limited ways (for example, by selling it to other people). One important fact to note is that someone can obey intellectual property laws while still plagiarizing (for example, by buying a term paper from an online paper mill, then turning it in to the instructor and claiming they wrote it themselves). And people can violate IP law but not plagiarize (for example, by including the .mp3 version of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "White Lines" on a Website without permission, but with a credit to Grandmaster Flash posted prominently on their website).

To complicate things, IP law involves lawyers, politicians, and big media companies, so there aren't a lot of clear rules about when something's legal and when it isn't. Use common sense. In this class, I'm mostly concerned about academic honesty, although we'll talk later in the semester about IP law and fair use as web design considerations.

If you have questions about any of this stuff, don't hesitate to ask.