Collaboration policy
I
really want to give everyone a high grade in this class. My goal is not
to create even more stress for you at a difficult time. So my collaboration policy in one sentence
is: your homework can share *a fair amount* with other students’
homeworks, as I describe below.
I
rarely have problems with over-collaboration. In fact, most Caltech
students could benefit from collaborating more on their humanities
assignments. So for most of you, these guidelines are just to assure you
that you're not over-collaborating even when you consult extensively with
others.
For
forum posts, it's fine to say simply that you agree with someone else's
post and to indicate what their point is. Try to add some reason or
example of your own, although one or two very short posts during one week are
OK.
For
homeworks, it's natural for students to think of similar approaches to a
homework question, and it's also natural for one or two striking passages from
the book to appear in a lot of students' homeworks. It does get my
attention when I see two students who use all of the same examples and make
essentially the same arguments about all of them. You can choose to share
judiciously to make sure this can't happen.
If
you had trouble finishing the reading, you should probably say explicitly that
you weren't able to finish, then write the assignment based on whatever pages
you did read. You can also ask for an extension.
Please
get in touch with me if you have any questions, and if I think the answers
would be interesting to others I’ll update this page.