Regular homework exercises are key to the active learning process in this course. Each day will involve some small assignment, building to the larger course projects. Students must complete (on time) at least 90% of each homework component (coding assignments, short response papers, blog postings and responses, in order to pass the course. For students who complete the 90% requirement, the homework taken all together, is worth 35% of your course grade.

Coding and programming in real life is a social activity, and professionals in the real world aren't "know-it-all" experts who work alone, but rather are tuned into discussion boards and regularly ask and answer questions to stay sharp and to learn from their community. In this class, we want you to work together and talk to each other and your instructors as your community resource, so we have built this into our course participation grade as a formal expectation. Beginning by week two, we'll expect each student to post at least once per week on our online class discussion board, and we strongly encourage you to do more than this minimum. Ask questions, make suggestions, share helpful resources you've found. Help each other out by trying to answer questions (and read the instructor posts too as we wade in to help). Your instructors will likely be dominating the class time as we model concepts and methods, so the discussion boards give you all a good space to form into a coding community to help each other and reflect together. Also, if you have a question about an assignment, always think of the discussion board as your first resource to check for helpful hints and to post your questions, because others may have the same question and answers are best shared! Of course you may e-mail us, but we really prefer you go the discussion board first, and doing so is, after all, worth course credit as your participation grade.

As scheduled throughout the course there will be several (probably about six to eight) short quizzes and tests that will take roughly half of the class period time. These will ask you to demonstrate your knowledge of coding practices and vocabulary learned in an immediately preceding portion of the course. We will drop your lowest two scores on these exams. (No make-up exams are given: see course policies below.)

Within the first three weeks of the course, we will familiarize you with some of our ongoing projects and their associated research questions. These include the Digital Archives and Pacific Cultures Site, the Digital Mitford Archive, and a site presenting manuscript variants in Emily Dickinson's Fascicle 16. You will be working in teams to contribute to these ongoing projects, to develop a site of your own designed to enhance these projects or take them in a new direction. The direction you take will be partly shaped by you in conversation with the instructors. Development of the project will involve doing a careful document analysis, developing a coding plan and rules to follow, coding your text(s), and developing programs to address your research question. It will also involve designing a project site to represent your research questions, the texts and your processing of them, as well as to share your coding scripts and to reflect on the results of your investigation. We will post milestones you must meet for the projects throughout the term. Project teams must meet 90% of the project milestone due dates in order to receive a passing grade. It is expected that project teams meet regularly (each week), check in with the instructors, and delegate tasks to each other. Reporting on project progress is required as part of the regular homework assignments for the course. Teams are encouraged to meet with us instructors during (or outside) our scheduled office hours. In the last few weeks of the course, almost all of your course work outside class will be devoted to project development, applying the methods you've been learning across the semester.

Grades are posted on Courseweb, and follow this standard scale: A: 93-100%, A-: 90-92%, B+: 87-89%, B: 83-86%, B-: 80-82%, C+: 77-79%, C: 73-76%, C-: 70-72%, D+: 67-69%, D: 60-66%, F: 59% and below. In taking the course on a S / NC (pass-fail) basis, students must earn a C to receive Satisfactory credit. We give G grades (incomplete) at our discretion and only in conformity with the guidelines in the Pitt-Greensburg Bulletin: http://www.bulletins.pitt.edu/greensburg/upg-academicpolicies.htm#Anchor-Grading-9431.

We strictly require your attendance, as it is not only a setback to yourself but to the entire class and the success of our projects if students are repeatedly absent. Students must attend at least 90% of our class meetings in order to pass the course. Late arrival—particularly a pattern of repeated late arrivals—may be counted as absences at our discretion. Attendance will be recorded for every class, and each student can earn percentage points added towards their total course grade based on the following scale: Zero or one absence: +3 pts; Two absences: +2 pts; Three or more: +0 pts. To earn credit, you must be present in the classroom by the beginning of class, until class is dismissed. For your own sanity, do not miss two consecutive classes. If you are experiencing a genuine emergency or crisis, alert us and provide documentation. (We do not want you to attend class if you have a fever or flu-like symptoms! If you wish to be excused from two or more consecutive class meetings due to your own documented illness, please contact one of the following: the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs, Prof. Wes Jamison (724-836-9988 or jamison at pitt.edu), our Campus Health Center (Nurse Patty or Pamela Reed, 724-836-9947 or upgdoc at pitt.edu), or the Director of Counseling, Gayle Pamerleau (gaylep at pitt.edu), who can then officially alert all of your professors.

Your daily homework for this course is time-sensitive! Coding assignments, response papers, and other homework exercises must be uploaded to CourseWeb (or to Box, or the Sandbox server as specified), by the date and time indicated by the instructors. Homework assignments will be posted online to our class DHDS website and linked from our schedule, so students who miss class are nevertheless expected to consult the schedule and submit assignments on time. Because we post and share answers to homework exercises after submission deadlines, we will not accept late homework submissions. In order to pass the course, students must submit at least 90% of the regular homework assignments, and complete at least 90% of the work in each component of the course.

Similarly, because we will be posting answers or sharing them in class, we do not give make-up examinations. However, we will drop your lowest two exam scores for the class, so that you may miss up to two exams without penalty.

Our class is fast paced, and requires that we all be making the best use we can of our in-person class sessions. Arriving late and leaving early disrupts the important collective mental activity of class. So does in-class texting and checking your cell phone. While class is in progress, talking disruptively, leaving the classroom, texting or using a cell phone or computer, reading a newspaper, or other distracting behavior will be actively discouraged, and may result in a deduction in your Participation grade. Please respect what we do in the classroom: attend class regularly, and come prepared to contribute your questions and ideas.

Each student is issued a University email address (username@pitt.edu) upon admission. This email address may be used by the University for official communication with students. Students are expected to read email sent to this account on a regular basis. Failure to read and react to University communications in a timely manner does not absolve the student from knowing and complying with the content of the communications. The University provides an email forwarding service that allows students to read their email via other service providers (e.g., Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo). Students who choose to forward their email from their pitt.edu address to another address do so at their own risk. If email is lost as a result of forwarding, it does not absolve the student from responding to official communications sent to their University email address. To forward email sent to your University account, go to http://accounts.pitt.edu, log into your account, click on Edit Forwarding Addresses, and follow the instructions on the page. Be sure to log out of your account when you have finished. (For the full Email Communication Policy, go to http://www.bc.pitt.edu/policies/policy/09/09-10-01.html.)

Source Citation and Plagiarism: One goal of our course is to reflect on how best to cite sources in digital contexts. We will consider how and why such citations differ from documenting printed texts. We will also consider the ease and frequency with which digital texts and graphics are plagiarized on the worldwide web, and discuss how the omission of source citations detracts from the authority of a digital information resource. We expect you to practice mindful source citation, and plagiarism on your part will have very serious consequences.

Plagiarism falsely represents another source’s words or ideas as your own, and, if you commit plagiarism in this course, you will receive a final course grade of F and be reported to the Vice President of Academic Affairs. Representing the voice of another individual as your own voice constitutes plagiarism, however generous that person may be in “helping” you with an assignment. Turning in an assignment generated collectively under the name of a single individual is considered plagiarism. When instructed to collaborate on a project, project collaborators share collective authorship and should identify themselves directly as a team. To avoid plagiarism, cite your sources whenever you quote, paraphrase, or summarize material, or use digital images from any outside source (including websites, articles, books, course readings, Courseweb postings, or someone else’s notes). When using the “copy” and “paste” features as you read and research, be sure that you are carefully marking that these passages are unprocessed from their source, so that you know to process it later. Forgetting to do so not only produces sloppy work but (whether you intended it or not) results in a false representation. As long as you make a good faith and clear effort to cite your sources, you will not be faulted for plagiarism, but your work will be penalized if citations are inaccurate, unclear, or lack important information. Cheating on exams or exercises will also receive a final course grade of F and will be reported to the Vice President of Academic Affairs.

If you have a disability for which you are or may be requesting an accommodation, you are encouraged to contact both your instructor and the Director of the Learning Resources Center, Dr. Lou Ann Sears, Room 240 Millstein Library Building (724) 836-7098 (voice) or los3 at pitt.edu as early as possible in the term. Learning Resources Center will verify your disability and determine reasonable accommodations for this course.