The floggings will continue until morale improves.
-- Management
Lab and Workshop Procedures
- Ensure you know the name of your workshop leader and Lab TA.
- Attendance at Workshops is "mandatory" (counts 5% "class
participation"). So expect a sign-in sheet and expect to contribute
to the whole workshop.
- Workshops are also advisable for all the good reasons the UR has
workshops, and because nothing but workshop-like questions appear in SFSs and
midterm exams.
- All labwork is handed in through blackboard. You'll find a
separate assignment (Course Content -> Assignments-> ) for each
lab: upload your work and submit.
-
Name your archive unambiguously by your last name or
part of it, and the laboratory
date. E.g. Fred Bloggs and Anthony Llewellyn-Jones:
bloggs_9-11.zip and llewell_9-13.tar
- All BB assignments lose 2% off their value (the maximum grade
possible)
every hour they're late.
- You must also sign in to your lab twice a week, even if you don't
stay.
Idea is you should be there, do your work there in your team, be able
to ask other students and the TA your questions.
- Pick your own partner for labs, except you may be "asked"
at random to "change partners for next lab".
- If your lab does not meet, you can do the work yourself or
self-organize with a classmate and work as a team.
- Labs are MT, WR. The MT lab work is ideally due in to
blackboard on, but we do some approximation to that, with labs
being due on Weds and Fri. As always, check BB for exact details.
- Week
of Sept 4-7 is an exception. Always Check Blackboard for due dates.
Grading Weights
Minor (say up to 10%) adjustments may be made to the weights, number
of assignments, etc. at the teaching staff's discretion.
- Midterm (1): 11%
- Projects (172: 4 or 5, 172H: 1): 30%
- Final Exam (1): 24%
- SFSs (14-20): 10%
- Labs (20 -- attendance required): 20%
- Workshops (12 -- participation required): 5%
Success Facilitation Surveys
give mutual feedback on how well our
teaching and learning processes are working. They happen at random.
Labs are for appearing in person and handing in or working on and
handing in your Lab Assignments.
Workshops are a special UR thing, catching on elsewhere. The
beneficial changes are of course internal to you, but we also use
workshops to let you demonstrate your engagement and enthusiasm. So
the grade reflects "participation".
Late Work Penalties
Labs and Projects: -2% per hour late (to Blackboard). That is,
if the original maximum grade is M, the maximum possible grade for
n hours late is (1-.02n)M. The assignments disappear from BB
48 hours after due date.
If you need an extension due to personal problems,
please obtain the permission of
the instructor and then email the TAs and cc the instructor with the
new arrangements you've
agreed to.
Academic Honesty:
Yogi says: "If you can't imitate him, don't copy him!"
This course follows
The University Policy on Academic Honesty .
Multiple Submissions
Multiple submissions are allowed (even encouraged), but cause trouble.
E.g,later blank hand-ins can mask TA attention from
earlier attempts.
- Ideally, we grade the most recent complete assignment (.pdf or .zip).
- If there is no complete assignment, we look to see what is
gradable and grade that (or at worst them).
Grading Workshops
The workshop leader keeps a spreadsheet with a grade for every
workshop:
- Not Present: 0
- Present but no or inadequate participation: 90
- Good participation: 100
The final point average is used to calculate the participation points
for the class, which will count between 5% and 10% of the total grade.
Grading Rubric for Labs, Projects, and WS Quizzes:
- TAs are not required to improve your code to make it run. Remove
all impure java, such as lines inserted by Eclipse. Make sure your
code compiles using just command-line javac to compile and
java to run.
- POINTS:
0: Nothing handed in.
- 1: Equivalent to D or E: insincere effort (jokes, limericks,
apologies, random code...), code doesn't compile, algorithm not understood...
If you know it won't compile, state your
diagnosis in the README...what's wrong?
- : C = 2.25 points : Fair, below average, sub-marginal content. E.g.
compiles but reliably crashes at run time: diagnose and explain your
problem in the README.
- B = 2.55 points: Good to Average, meets expectations.
- A = 2.85 points:
Exemplary, perfect work:
Runs, meets spec "reliably" (maybe some wrong answers, sometimes crashes...).
As ever, explaining your problem in README.
- - Appended to letter grades to penale bad style
(inadequate indentation or comments, bad code
organization like a big program in one huge file, ...).
- - Likewise to penalize inadequate README. Include your name, adequate assignment identifier.
One-sentence descriptions of all .java
files, directions for compiling and running (command line arguments,
format for input, input file formats, user interaction
instructions...)
Also any other information or analysis requested in
the assignment.
- + Added for extra creativity or functionality (explain in
README -- don't be modest). An A+ = 3.0 points.
Projects: Grading Code and README
One thing that might be
important to emphasize in 172 that people tried to emphasize while I was
there, but never thought was important...code quality. It's too easy to
write garbage code that meets the specific requirements for a given
project. 172 is a perfect time to really push on the fact that bad/ugly
code is just as "non-working" as code that doesn't meet the requirements.
It's a much more painful lesson to learn after you graduate :-). You know
the typical line of how to enforce turning in assignments on time, "In
industry if you're late, you lose your job." Well, that's patently false,
I'm not sure I've ever met someone that's met a deadline. However, it is
true that if you check in ugly, unmaintainable, code that you'll likely be
looking for a new job.
-- Jonathan Norwood, URCS Alum
Labwork is normally to be done with a partner (meant to help,
can be painful, anyway
part of the 172 experience): there can be
exceptions, but in any case make sure all contributors to the
lab exercises have their names on the handed-in product.
Projects are a fine chance to get together with others to
figure out what's wanted, develop strategies and tactics, etc.
However, you are not to copy (or allow to be copied) your code or
prose. Hand in only your own work, however much remembered and
reinterpreted it is. "Helping someone" or begging
for help through file-sharing is actually arranging a suicide
pact.
Project Extra Credit
Give a clear description of any extensions or special features of
your project. This will be used for assigning extra credit.
Some extra credit ideas are mentioned in the Scheme, C, and
possibly Matlab projects.
Extra credit will be considered after making the first
cut at letter grades for the course. If you're near the top of your
bracket, or the amount of extra work you've done is particularly large,
you can expect it to push you up a grade.
From Numbers to Letters
Final letter grades are computed
when all grades are in. With luck, we'll get Blackboard to give
you an understandable picture of exactly where you stand at any time.
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Last Change: 09/07/14, CB