Structural Analysis and Systems 1

All students enrolling in this course undertake that:

 they will conduct themselves with honour and integrity, both inside and outside the lecture theatres;
 they will exercise kindness, empathy, and compassion in their interactions with other students, tutors, faculty, and staff;
 they will not give or receive aid in the competency quiz and the final examination;
 they will not give or receive unpermitted aid in assignments, in the preparation of reports, or in any other work that is to be used by the instructor as the basis of grading;
 they will do their share and take an active part in seeing to it that others as well as themselves uphold the letter and spirit of the Honour Code.

Examples of conduct that may be regarded as being in violation of the Honour Code include:

 Representing the work of another as one’s own work
 Copying an assignment solution from another student or any other source
 Giving or receiving aid on an assignment under circumstances in which a reasonable person should have known that such aid was not permitted
 Copying from another student’s quiz or examination paper or allowing another student to copy from one’s own paper
 Giving or receiving unpermitted aid on a take-home examination
 Revising and resubmitting an assignment, quiz, or exam for regrading, without the instructor’s knowledge and consent
Sanctions for violating the Honour Code may range from a fail grade in the course to suspension from the university.

Generative AI use in this course

It is not practical to regulate the use of Generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT) for internal assessments on this course – weekly homework and quiz assignments. Students are allowed to use these tools in whichever manner they see fit. However, you should be aware of the risks, which are described below.

Research clearly shows that the unrestricted use of ChatGPT by students during mathematical education leads to decreased performance on external assessment (which happens to comprise most of your grade in this course). For instance, this study showed a 17% reduction in test performance, more than three grade points.

The primary mechanisms leading to adverse outcomes appear to be (1) shallow learning, where AI prevents you spending sufficient time with the material to obtain a deep understanding of it, and (2) AI dependency, where overuse of the tool leads to an inability to apply methods or think critically once it is taken away.

If you intend to use Generative AI on this course, consider prompting with some basic guardrails to prevent the above impacts on your learning:

“You are a math tutor helping me with a homework problem. Please suggest one (and only one) next step for me to consider on the following problem. Don’t complete the problem for me. **paste your problem**.”

“You are a coding tutor helping me with a homework problem. Here is some code I have written and the error that I am getting. Please give me some hints about how I can fix this. Do not give me the corrected code though. **paste your code and error message**.”

Even with the guardrails, a helpful Generative AI will frequently just give you the solution to a problem, cheating you of the opportunity to learn it yourself.

Code of Behaviour and Academic Integrity

All students are expected to be familiar with the University’s codes, policies, and procedures including but not limited to the Student Code of Conduct, Campus Drug and Alcohol Policy, Copyright Policy, Disability and Impairment Policy, and Equity and Diversity Policy. It is the responsibility of each student to be familiar with the definitions, policies and procedures concerning academic misconduct/dishonest behaviour. More information on UC’s policies and academic integrity can be found in the undergraduate handbook as well as at:

https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/about-uc/corporate-information/policies
https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/about-uc/what-we-do/teaching/academic-integrity

Special considerations

 The academic remedy for special consideration on the midterm test or the final exam will be an equivalent alternative assessment. These alternative assessments are only available to students who have approved special consideration applications for the assessments at an appropriate severity level.

 The mark on these alternative assessments will replace the original mark in the course grade calculation unless the student declines the offer or otherwise does not sit an alternative assessment, in which case the original mark will be used.

 The alternative assessments for this course will be held on-campus in the week of 8 July 2024. It is your responsibility to ensure that you are available for these dates if you want to benefit from the academic remedy for your special consideration.

 All communication associated with the arrangements of these equivalent alternative assessments will be conducted using official UC email accounts. The offer to sit an alternative assessment will come with a date/time during the resit week. Students will have a clearly specified amount of time to respond to the offer. Failure to respond will be interpreted as a declined offer.

 If a student has applied for special consideration but the application has not yet been approved when arrangements are being made for the alternative sitting, they may be permitted to sit the alternative assessment, but the mark will only be applied if the application is approved by the special consideration committee at an appropriate severity level.