ECE 461 - Exams
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Exams scheduled for these dates:
Exam 1, Thursday, March 11, 9.30-10:50am, via
CBTF Online.
Exam 2, Thursday, April 15, 9.30-10:50am, via
CBTF Online.
Final, Tuesday, May 11, 1.30-4.30pm, via
CBTF Online.
There are no scheduled make-up exams.
If you have an unavoidable medical or personal emergency, an
exception might be granted. To be eligible for a make-up exam, you
must notify the instructor (not the TA) before the scheduled starting
time of the exam, and you must fully document your absence.
Students
with documented disabilities must notify the lecture instructor at
least two weeks before Exam 1.
Exam instructions:
- Final exam duration: The final exam will be 3 hours long, including scan/upload time, so we strongly advise you to finish your exam with plenty of time to spare, in case you run into issues scanning/uploading. We will deduct 20% points per late minute after those first 3 hours, and Gradescope will automatically stop accepting exams after those additional 5 minutes. No late exams will be accepted and you will get a zero in the exam if it is not uploaded on time (no exceptions).
- No collaboration allowed: You are not allowed to share or collaborate on this exam and all work should be your own; otherwise, an Academic Integrity report will be filed against you and sanctions will be applied.
- Closed book: all exams will be closed book, closed notes, but you may bring one double-sided 8 1/2 ′′ by 11 ′′ sheet of notes. However, you should not depend on it, browsing and searching through it will only waste your time. If you know what you are doing, you should not need any aides.
- Calculations: Calculators and other electronic ways to do calculations, like Wolfram alpha, are not allowed and neither is searching online; otherwise, an Academic Integrity report will be filed against you and sanctions will be applied.
- Solving the exam: you must solve the exam in blank sheets of paper. Tablets are not allowed for writing and you may not print the exam; otherwise, an Academic Integrity report will be filed against you and sanctions will be applied.
- An Academic Integrity report will be filed against you and sanctions will be applied for unauthorized actions.
- Solution uploads: Make sure that your scans or photos are legible and that you correctly assign each solution to its question, or you will be deducted at least 5% of the corresponding problem part.
- Instructions for uploading your solutions to Gradescope can be found here. Make sure you know how to do this before the exam so you don't waste time trying to figure out how to do it during the exam because there will be no late exams accepted.
- Students reported issues with some free scanning apps, so below we have instructions for scanning with two different free apps that work very well.
- Instructions on how to scan the required pdf of the solutions in Android are here.
- Instructions on how to scan the required pdf of the solutions in MacOS are here.
- You MUST remain in the proctoring session until you are finished uploading, even if the proctor says you can leave before that. We will not accept your exam if you leave the proctoring session before finishing your submission to Gradescope, and you will get a zero in the exam.
- Proctoring: This course uses the College of Engineering Computer-Based Testing Facility service CBTF Online for its exams.
- Review our exam policies (above) and all instructions on the CBTF website before March 1 because during that week you will have to complete a quiz regarding exam policies and during the lecture of March 9 we will spend part of the lecture making sure you know how to position your camera, etc. for the exam. Each of these two activities account for 1% of your course grade.
- Any violation/disregard of CBTF policy, like incorrect camera positioning, ignoring proctor's instructions, etc. may result in your exam not being accepted (giving a zero) or in an Academic Integrity report being filed against you with sanctions applied, depending on the situation.
- The policies of the CBTF are the policies of this course, and Academic Integrity infractions related to the CBTF are infractions in this course.
- If you have accommodations identified by the Division of Rehabilitation-Education Services (DRES) for exams, please email your Letter of Accommodations (LOA) to CBTF Manager Carleen Sacris at sacris1@illinois.edu and to Prof. Alvarez before you make your first exam reservation.
- If you have any issue during an exam, please inform the proctor immediately. Work with the proctor to resolve the issue at the time before logging off.
Absences from exams:
If you miss an exam due to illness, injury, family emergency or other reasons beyond your control, you will be asked to provide your professor with an absence letter from the Student Assistance Center in the Office of the Dean of Students. Documentation which validates the absence is required by the Dean's Office to provide the absence letter. The absence letter will serve to verify the reason for your absence from the exam. Your ECE 461 professor will then take an appropriate action that may include offering an oral examination or written examination.
Regrades:
We will use Gradescope to grade the exams, so you will receive an email from Gradescope to log in and see your graded exam. If after looking at the posted solutions, you feel there was an inaccuracy in the grading of your exam, you can request a regrade within Gradescope itself.
Do not submit a regrade asking for more partial credit because you did so much work nor because you think something should be worth more/less that it does. Only regrades regarding inaccurate grading will be addressed.
Regrades could be subjected a regrading of the entire exam, no just those parts you indicate. Therefore, your grade could go up or down as appropriate.
You will get an email from the instructors after the exams are graded indicating when you can start submitting regrades and when the deadline to submit the regrades is.
Make sure you submit regrade requests by the deadline indicated in that email, so do not wait until the last minute to submit it and then run into internet issues.
Old exams
You can find copies of some old exams and their solutions below.
These past exams are provided here so you can identify your misconceptions on course topics and get help on those during office hours. They are not a replacement for attending lectures and reading the textbook.
We provide both the blank exam and the solutions so that you can follow this procedure:
1) Solve the blank exam.
2) Compare your solutions to the provided solutions and identify your misconceptions.
If you first look at the solutions and then solve the blank exam, you will not be able to identify your misconceptions as easily, so that is not a good idea.
Only looking at the solutions without even trying to solve the problems will be of little/no use.
Solving multiple past exams without understanding the concepts will not result in a good exam grade.
These exams are a sample of the type of questions that aim at testing the students’ understanding of the course’s concepts, but there are a myriad of other questions, with the same level of difficulty, that could also test those concepts . You should not expect your exam to include questions like those in these past exams.