Grading

Grades for the programming portion will be composed of components from the programming exercises and reports. Each student is expected to program both cooperatively and independently, and to describe their roles in the programming projects. Later programs will be presented in class to discuss the design approach, implementation, and results, and to demonstrate functionality.

The remainder of the grades will be a combination of class participation, presentations, and a project. Each student is expected to attend all classes, and to participate regularly and meaningfully. At a minimum, each student must make at least one comment per class. Each student will make several presentations, including a paper from the primary literature, a set of review or background material on the same topic, and a report on the students course project. In addition, the students will write up and have approved the project plans before embarking on the project.

For the course project, each student will define and execute a computational biology project. Although it is not necessary that the project be truly publishable, the student should aim for the style and scope of a paper in e.g., Bioinformatics or PLoS Computational Biology. We will continue the pair programming for these projects, so each project paper will include the other students as co-authors, and will provide a clear description of the roles of other students in producing the results. Presentation of the project will occur towards the end of the semester, and should be in the form of a 15 minute conference talk, leaving 5 minutes for questions.

To maintain consistency and avoid fluctuating standards, evaluations of graded material will be made at the level expected by the time of the preliminary exams. This means that grades at the beginning of the course may be lower than at the end; to compensate for this, final grades will be weighted to allow for improvement in programming, writing, and verbal communication skills over the course of the semester.

Honor Code

From the Graduate School:

Education at the Health Sciences Center is conducted under the honor system. All students who have entered health professional programs should have developed the qualities of honesty and integrity, and each student should apply these principles to his or her academic and subsequent professional career. All students are also expected to have achieved a level of maturity, which is reflected by appropriate conduct at all times.

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