All excuses and requests for special accommodations must be submitted promptly. The meaning of "prompt" depends on the nature of your special situation. If you know about a conflict ahead of time, you should speak to us ahead of time. But, if you are seriously ill or injured, it might reasonably take some days before you are in a position to contact us.
The course staff can help with many matters. For major problems, or problems the staff seems unable to resolve, contact the instructor.
For major or extended problems, consult the Dean of Students and/or Emergency Dean. They can help in a number of ways, including communicating with instructors when you cannot easily do so.
If you wait for an extended period of time, with no compelling reason for the delay, we may give you nothing or less than you might have gotten with a prompt request.
If you need special accommodations such as extra time on exams, tell us what you need right away and bring us your note from DRES as soon as possible. The first examlet is in the third week of classes, so we will need to make arrangements quickly.
In most cases requiring extra time or quiet conditions, it is best to take your exams at DRES, because you get more scheduling flexibility and quiet conditions. However, they need about a week's lead time to set this up, so get started early. Try to book a time that is as close as possible to when the rest of the class is taking the examlet, but still interacts reasonably with the rest of your obligations. It's ok if you take your examlet at a different time, or even a different day.
If you have a disability that might cause you to need extra time, but aren't yet officially certified by DRES, speak to them now. This includes not only physical disabilities but also problems that impair your ability to concentrate such as ADHD and test anxiety. Also tell us. We can't give you extra time without DRES approval, but there may be other ways we can help.
See the Missed Examlets page for how to handle examlet problems created by illness, conflicts, etc.
Please tell us if you have some other special situation that might impact your class participation or require special arrangements.
In particular, please tell us if it's a problem to turn off your phone during examlets because you are likely to get an emergency call. E.g. you have young kids, you have a sick familiy member, you are a volunteer fireman. You can leave your phone on, but try to sit in a location where we can easily work with you if you do get a call.
For a wider range of special situations, it may be helpful to sit in the front row or on an aisle. Please work with the proctors if you have trouble finding a suitable seat.
If you must miss your assigned discussion, e.g. due to illness or a conflicting obligation, you have three options. You may attend a different discussion. In this case, you must make inform both TAs involved, so they can ensure you receive proper credit. Alternatively, you may arrange with your TA to makeup the problems, i.e. do them on your own and turn them into the TA. This must be done promptly. Finally, one missed discussion will be ignored when computing final course grades.
When you miss a discussion, you are still required to collect your graded examlets by the deadline. Graded examlets can be collected at any office hour held in 0211 Siebel. (After the collection deadline, you must ask the instructor.)
When you have made up a discussion in any of these ways, make sure to check that your attendance gets recorded correctly on moodle. These unusual situations are the main source of recording errors.
We occasionally have outages in campus networks, power, or CS departmental servers. Weather sometimes disrupts operations and occasionally even shuts campus. We will extend deadlines or make other arrangements when there are long or awkwardly timed outages. The details depend on the exact circumstances. However, we expect that you will download critical documents (e.g. exam study materials) in a timely manner and that you realize that support is very limited at night.
If you live in an outlying area, please keep us informed about issues that may be affecting outlying areas but not central Champaign-Urbana. For example, wind often closes the rural roads even after Urbana streets are plowed and safe.
If a weather or other emergency makes travel hazardous, do not travel. This counts as a good excuse for missing in-person activities such as exams and discussions. See elsewhere in this document for how to make up the work involved.
Piazza is a great way to stay informed and also to keep the course staff informed about issues we might not have noticed.
For homework and reading quizzes, many minor problems are covered by the fact that we drop the lowest 1-2 items from each category. If you have a problem that is out of the ordinary, please contact us about appropriate arrangements. This would include, for example, serious or prolonged illness or injury, family emergencies, technical glitches with moodle submissions, and so forth. Depending on the circumstances, we may ask you to provide documentation (e.g. a doctor's note).
We expect to hear about such issues promptly and to receive delayed work as soon as reasonably possible.