CN5901 Coursework: some advice

by Andres Baravalle

Outline

• The Coursework: some advice

How much work is required?

• Each 10% of the marks should reflect about 7 hours of work
• 5 marks mean that you should put in 3.5 hours of work

How much work is required?!

This module builds heavily on top of what you have been studying during your year 1.

You will be already familiar with HTML, CSS, the general principles of Object Oriented Programming and the basics of computer networks.

How will you be supported?

The module team will support you in class and review your assignment in class, on a week by week bases. The module team will NOT review your assignment after the last lab.

Be wise, and start your assignment as soon as possible.

References

No unproved statement should EVER be in your assignments. Every single statement in your assignments has to be either:

• Proved by yourself in the assignment itself
• Proved by yourself or someone else BEFORE and in such case you need to provide a CORRECT reference
  

Reference styles

A number of different references style are in use in the academic community.

UEL is using the Harvard style.

References: labelling example

The Free Software movement advocates the development and use of software that is free to use, free to modify and free to redistribute, on both pragmatic (Stallman, 2002) and philosophical (Stallman, 2004) grounds. The Free Software movement shares many points of contact with the Open Source movement (Perence, 1999), and they are often commonly referred together, as FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software) (FLOSS project, 2002), FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) (Bollinger, 2003) or F/OSS (MIT Open Source Group, 2002). [...]

References: listing example

Stallman, R. (2004) The Free Software Definition, Free Software Foundation. Available from  http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-sw.html (Accessed 1 September 2009)

References: where to find more

• Available in the library: Cite them right: The essential referencing guide
• On line (UEL Harvard style reference): http://www.uel.ac.uk/lls/support/harvard.htm
  

Media resources

Feel free to incorporate pictures and graphics and media in general into your work, but make sure that you understand the copyright implications.

• Any original work of authorship fixed on any medium of expression is covered by copyright protection
• The owner of the artwork can give it away, sell it or license it
• The owner is the only one who has the prerogative to make copies of it
  

Media resources: licenses

Creative Commons licenses have been created ad hoc for content. There are six major Creative Commons licenses:

• Attribution (CC-BY) (similar to BSD licenses)
• Attribution Share Alike (CC-BY-SA) (similar to the GPL license)
• Attribution No Derivatives (CC-BY-ND) (similar to freeware)
• Attribution Non-Commercial (CC-BY-NC)
• Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike (CC-BY-NC-SA)
• Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)
  

Media resources: where to start

Want to use images for your web site/application? Here are some starting points:

• For public domain images: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources
• For CC images: http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
  

Media resources: legal aspects

In some cases there are copyright exceptions for academic use. The breath of these exceptions is questionable and untested in trial.

For this module, you will have to work within the same legal context of a IT professional - without any of the academic exceptions.

Libraries

You are encouraged to use Open Source third-party libraries.

Use what you need. Some examples include:

• CodeIgniter
• CakePHP
• Zend Framework
• PEAR classes

List of resources

If you have any resources (code or images) that you have not created yourself, you must include an appendix labelled "List of resources".

It will list all the resources that you have not developped, their name, authors, original URL and where did you use them in your application.

You can include Open Source or public domain resources only, and you cannot include anything without a URL.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is using someone else’s material without attribution and is dealt with through a “Breach of Regulations” hearing.

Repeated Breach of Regulations are grounds for expulsion.

If you do not write any original content, but just “reference” external material, you will not pass this module.

Plagiarism: your code

Plagiarism applies both to text and code; any code that you have not produced (e.g. from software or books) but that features in your work without attribution constitutes plagiarism.