The work you must do for this course includes
You are responsible for keeping an eye on your moodle gradebook and promptly reporting apparent errors. Do not discard returned work such as examlet sheets until you have confirmed that the number appears properly in your gradebook listing. See the Regrade page for how to report grading and/or entry problems.
For each grade item and average, moodle will show you how you stand relative to the rest of the class. If the percentage and/or the rank number alarms you, seek help.
There will be weekly examlets, held at the start of class Thursdays beginning in the third week of classes. If you check out the grading formula, these account for most of your final course average. We plan 12 weekly examlets, each 30 minutes long.
We do not drop any examlet scores. See the Missed Examlets page for how to arrange a makeup if you are forced to miss one.
There will also be a short final exam, consisting of two parts:
The whole final (both parts together) is worth twice as much as each of the earlier examlets.
At the final, you can optionally choose to retake one of examlets 1-11. A selection form will be posted about a week before the final. Your retake score will replace your original score if it is better, but only up to a maximum score of 80%. Therefore, the retake process is useful only for improving a poor score or filling in a zero. Retakes are not offered for examlet 12.
If you take examlet 11 at the final exam, you may take it only once. If you have already taken this examlet, the attempt counts as your retake and is capped at 80%. If you have not yet taken it, the attempt is a makeup for full credit (and you may also retake a different examlet).
Review materials for each examlet will be posted on the Exams page about a week before the examlet. Before the first examlet, familiarize yourself with the basic CS 173 exam instructions, since they will not be printed on the exam itself.
Questions on examlets may be include exact copies of homework or study problems, or similar problems, or problems that are less similar but on the same topic. They might be similar to exam problems from past terms, or perhaps different, or perhaps look generally similar but differ in critical details. We make no promises about whether you will or won't be doing a problem that you've seen before. Similarly, makeups and retake exams may use previously-seen problems and/or new ones. Therefore, when studying for an examlet, concentrate on mastering general skills rather than memorizing specific solutions.
You will need to prepare for each lecture by doing the posted readings and then an on-line quiz based on these readings. These quizzes may also contain questions that review earlier material (including material from course prerequisites). This quiz will be due at 11:59pm the night before the lecture. When we switch (in week 3) to a single lecture per week, there will typically be two reading quizzes due Monday evening (and nothing due Wednesday evening).
The reading quizzes are intended to be straightforward if you've made a good-faith attempt to do the readings and are up-to-date with course material. These quizzes give you immediate feedback on your total score and can be submitted as many times as you like.
You should do the reading quizzes on your own, because the process of finding the answers helps you remember the answers. You may use other textbooks and the internet to help find answers, but be aware that some details vary from author to author and you must follow the conventions of our textbook.
We will drop your lowest two quiz scores in computing your reading quiz average.
Moodle will not allow you to submit quizzes late. Moreover, moodle will not let you review answers to an activity that you never submitted. So, make sure to submit at least once before the deadline, even if your submission is incomplete (or even blank). If you were unable to submit a quiz on time for reasons beyond your control, or if you ran into technical issues with your submission, contact the instructor for help.
You are expected to attend the discussion you are registered for. During discussions, you will work on problems in small groups, getting feedback from course staff. Bring your manual of discussion problems (available at the Illini Union Bookstore) and a notebook for recording your work.
The expectation is that everyone present at a discussion will receive 100% credit for that week's discussion problems. However, we reserve the right to take off points (or even give zero credit) if behavior during discussion suggest that you aren't making a good-faith effort to do the work as intended. We hope this will be extremely rare.
Attendance will not be taken at the first discussion, and we will drop one later missed discussion.
Your discussion attendence grade will also include credit for collecting your graded examlets on the following schedule:
If you made up the examlet two weeks after the original sitting, these deadlines are extended by one week.
Examlets can be collected at discussions or at office hours held in 0211. (After the collection deadline, you must ask the instructor.) You must collect your own examlets; your friends cannot collect them for you.
There will be an online homework due 11:59pm each Tuesday on moodle. Homework problems are computer-graded questions, but more difficult than those on reading quizzes. Although you may submit answers as many times as you like, you won't receive feedback on your score until the deadline closes.
You are expected to do the homework on your own. You may not ask other students (or the piazza forum) for the answers to those questions (or minor variations of them). However, you may freely discuss the concepts and general issues involved in the questions, and you may get help and hints from course staff e.g. at office hours or on piazza.
We'll drop your (one) lowest homework grade when computing your homework average.
The policies and warnings about late submissions are the same as for quizzes.
On the Exams page, you will find a set of study problems which should be completed before you take the corresponding examlet. It's better to finish them a few days earlier, so you have time to seek help if you're having trouble with some type of problem. You should write up a solution to each problem on your own, as if you were taking an exam or turning in a graded homework, before checking your answers against the posted solutions. You may freely consult friends and/or course staff for help checking your answers and for hints if you get stuck.
Study problems are not graded and do not directly affect your course average. However, they are not optional. If you don't do them, or if you peek at the answers before making a good faith attempt to write your own solutions, you won't be properly prepared to do similar problems on the examlet.
You may also wish to look at the A-lecture web pages from previous terms, to use old examlets as additonal study problems.
Please do not post solutions or partial solutions on piazza. This will spoil the fun for folks still working on the problems, because they may not yet be ready to see the answer. Contact the instructors privately if you think we need to add something to the posted solutions or hints. However, public discussion of general concepts and techniques is fine.