Program Policies and Regulations
The Master of Data Science Policies and Regulations are part of the campus-wide UBC Policies and Regulations document. Below is a summary of those Policies and Regulations that students frequently ask about and that are specific to the Master of Data Science program.
Attendance
Attendance in lectures and lab sessions is not mandatory but highly recommended. You will get the most out of the program if you show up in person.
If you are feeling unwell, are experiencing any flu-like symptoms, or have reason to believe you may have Covid-19, please do not come to any in-person meetings including lectures, labs, office hours, or quizzes.
Lecture recordings
We do not livestream or require instructors to record their lectures. If you miss a class you can catch up by reviewing lecture notes as well as by talking to peers and asking them to share their notes. When past lecture recordings are available, instructors may grant access to students who were absent for approved reasons only (e.g. illness, jury duty, etc.).
Academic concession policy
If you are expecting to miss an assignment or a quiz for a justified reason you can request an academic concession before the deadline. From the UBC Senate policy on academic concession, grounds for academic concession can be illness, conflicting responsibilities, or compassionate grounds. Examples of compassionate grounds, from the above policy, include “a traumatic event experienced by the student, a family member, or a close friend; an act of sexual assault or other sexual misconduct experienced by the student, a family member, or a close friend; a death in the family or of a close friend.”
To request an academic concession, students should immediately send a completed and signed academic concession form to the course coordinator via Slack. Upon receiving the form, the course coordinator, the Lab Instructor and/or MDS Co-Directors will make a decision about how to proceed. Failure to present valid documentation may result in a failing grade.
Grades and Academic Standing
General grading scheme
UBC uses a percentage grade system from 0 to 100%. The following table shows an unofficial conversion from percentage grades to letter grades (source: 2nd table of this page):
| Percentage (%) | Letter Grade |
|---|---|
| 90-100 | A+ |
| 85-89 | A |
| 80-84 | A- |
| 76-79 | B+ |
| 72-75 | B |
| 68-71 | B- |
| 64-67 | C+ |
| 60-63 | C |
| 0-59 | F (Fail) |
Group project
Near the end of a group project, everyone is required to complete a team work reflection. This deliverable is an individual report intended to give you an avenue to present your viewpoint as to how the project went, how the group worked together, and your role in the group. Each group member must complete this form to report on the contributions of yourself and the other group members. This is a private, individual report, meaning that none of your group members will see this report.
When needed, we will also use the team work reflection, data from remote version control repositories, and/or interviews with team members to assess group performance and adjust the final grades of individuals using the project contribution multiplier.
Failed courses and C/C+ grades
To pass an MDS course a student must score 60% or above. To graduate from MDS, a student must pass all courses, with no more than 3 credits in the 60%-67% range (C or C+). All MDS courses are worth 1 UBC credit except for Capstone, which is worth 6 credits. Thus, to graduate from MDS a student can get no more than 3 C/C+ grades in Blocks 1-6 and must also score at least 68% in Capstone.
Final course grades
With a few exceptions (which will be communicated to students at the start of a course), each course grade is calculated using the lab and quiz grades, weighted 50% and 50% respectively. However, if a student fails all the quizzes in a course (each below 60%) then the final course grade will be the lower of their calculated course grade and 67%. This means that to graduate a student cannot fail all the quizzes in more than 3 courses.
Late Submissions
A late submission is defined as any work submitted after the deadline. For a late submission, the student will receive a 75% scaling of their grade for the first occurrence, 50% scaling of their grade for the second to fifth occurrences, and will receive a grade of 0 for subsequent occurrences. Late submissions are cumulative throughout the program.
Re-grading
If you have a question about the way your work was graded, please contact the relevant person based on the table below:
| Assessment type | Who to contact |
|---|---|
| Lab grade | Submit a regrade request on Gradescope |
| Manually graded quiz question | The person (usually a TA) who graded that question |
| Autograded quiz question | Lab Instructor |
When we receive a regrade request we may re-grade the entire submission; thus, your lab/quiz grade may go up or down as a result of re-grading.
Grading concerns: time limit
If you perceive a problem with a grade, you have one week to raise a concern from the time that your grade was released. After that, your grade is final.
Reasonable grading concerns
Grades are not perfect; some randomness in grading is normal, meaning that you’ll generally get more than you deserve in some cases and less than you deserve in other cases. Thus, it is possible to cheat the system by consistently complaining when your grade is too low but not when it is too high. Unfortunately, this takes time away from the course staff which could have been spent on making the course better for everyone. Thus, in our view, students who overzealously contest grades are penalizing their classmates for personal gain.
Sometimes serious grading errors are made, for example when a grader did not see your answer to a question or completely deviated from standard grading practices for some unknown reason. Such situations can be quite frustrating for students, and we want you to feel that the courses are fair. In these cases, it makes sense for the student to bring the error to our attention.
Balancing these two sides is difficult. In MDS the policy is as follows: if a grade is challenged in a way that is deemed unreasonable, the student will receive a warning. This decision will be made by the instructor (not TA). If a student receives three warnings, the student will lose the privilege to challenge grades for the remainder of the program. Examples of unreasonable requests include extremely minor complaints (e.g. half a mark on an assignment) or repeatedly contesting the same issue once a decision has been reached. This policy applies to both labs and quizzes.
Quiz policies
Unless otherwise specified, MDS quizzes are closed book, with allowance of a double-sided A4 cheatsheet. You may only access Canvas during the quiz.
It is NOT permitted to communicate with anyone else, including via posting quiz questions on internet forums, during a quiz.
Use of AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT) is also strictly prohibited and can lead to serious consequences.
The following are also NOT permitted:
- taking a quiz from a remote location
- leaving the quiz room early
- leaving and re-entering the quiz room (unless approved by the instructor, please talk to the instructor before the quiz if you think you might have to leave the room during the quiz)
Failing to observe the above expectations may result in a zero grade for the quiz in question.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism, which is intellectual theft, occurs where an individual submits or presents the oral or written work of another person as his or her own and can include:
- multiple students submitting the same response
- copying from sources without citing them
- copying verbatim (word-for-word) from source and citing, but failing to make it explicit that this is a quotation (quotations should be used only rarely, if at all)
- sending/emailing/sharing part of your answers, including code, to anyone else, including classmates (unless you are working together in an official group assignment)
- redistribute or use redistributed assignments and solutions.
Plagiarism will not be tolerated in the MDS program and may result in dismissal from the program. Students are responsible for ensuring that any work submitted does not constitute plagiarism. Students who are in any doubt as to what constitutes plagiarism should consult their Instructor before handing in any assignments.
For more information see the UBC Academic Misconduct policies.
Code Plagiarism
Students must correctly cite any code that has been authored by someone else or by the student themselves for other assignments. Cases of code plagiarism may include, but are not limited to:
- the reproduction (copying and pasting) of code with none or minimal reformatting (e.g., changing the name of the variables)
- the translation of an algorithm or a script from a language to another
- the generation of code by automatic code-generations software
An “adequate acknowledgement” requires a detailed identification of the (parts of the) code reused and a full citation of the original source code that has been reused.
Use of LLMs
- Use of LLMs on quizzes in MDS will be strictly prohibited. The purpose of our quizzes is to test your knowledge, not the LLMs.
- In some assignments in MDS you will be explicitly asked to use LLMs so that you get practice working with them.
- If you are not asked to use an LLM to solve a problem in MDS, you probably shouldn’t use them to directly solve the problem. By doing so you are only cheating yourself of the practice and learning you would get by solving the problem yourself.
Leaves of Absence (medical or personal)
Students in good academic standing may request long-term academic leave from the program for medical or personal reasons and return, within a year, to complete the MDS program. These requests must be discussed and submitted in writing to the MDS Leadership Team well in advance. Leaves can only start at the beginning of a term, which for MDS, is January 1st. It is also possible that the MDS course offerings and orders change from year-to-year. Hence, students who are on leave from the program may have to take their outstanding courses in in a different order than expected. Please be aware that fees and other costs (loss of student loans and bursaries) may apply depending on individual situations.
Program Withdrawal
Students may withdraw from the MDS program for medical or personal reasons. Depending on the timing of the withdrawal, full or partial tuition fee refunds may or may not be given. A request to withdraw from the program must be submitted in writing to the MDS Leadership Team.
The MDS Leadership Team may request a student to withdraw from the program. This is only done after extensive discussions between the instructional team, the leadership team and the affected student. Reasons for this may be related to the health and well-being of the student in question or his/her peers, not meeting program requirements, unsatisfactory conduct or other significant reasons.
Full-Time Commitment
The MDS program is approved by the UBC Senate as a full-time program. Hence, students must take the program on a full-time basis as part of their cohort and cannot complete the program on a part-time basis.
UBC’s Policies and Resources to Support Student Success
UBC provides resources to support student learning and to maintain healthy lifestyles but recognizes that sometimes crises arise and so there are additional resources to access including those for survivors of sexual violence. UBC values respect for the person and ideas of all members of the academic community. Harassment and discrimination are not tolerated nor is suppression of academic freedom. UBC provides appropriate accommodation for students with disabilities and for religious, spiritual and cultural observances. UBC values academic honesty and students ae expected to acknowledge the ideas generated by others and to uphold the highest academic standards in all of their actions. Details of the policies and how to access support are available here.
Option Transfers
Transfer between options is generally not permitted. In exceptional circumstances (e.g., an external job offer requiring a different area of specialization), a transfer request may be considered if: a) a written rationale is submitted prior to the end of Block 2, b) the student is in a good academic standing, and c) the student had initially been accepted to both options. Final decisions will be at the discretion of the Option Directors, following discussion with the instructional and leadership teams.