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.
This course uses the College of Engineering Computer-Based Testing Facility (CBTF) for some of its tests: https://cbtf.engr.illinois.edu. 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 take your Letter of Accommodation (LOA) to the CBTF proctors in person before you make your first exam reservation. The proctors will advise you as to whether the CBTF provides your accommodations or whether you will need to make other arrangements with your instructor. Any problem with testing in the CBTF must be reported to CBTF staff at the time the problem occurs. If you do not inform a proctor of a problem during the test then you forfeit all rights to redress.
The CBTF tests run from Sunday through Tuesday of the week in which they are scheduled. For example, the first CBTF tests runs from Sunday September 8 to Tuesday September 10. You can sign up to take the test any time during that window, as long as your desired slot is available, using the CBTF scheduler. Please read documentation about CBTF, a video on how to take a test at CBTF, and CBTF documentation for students. Please see Missed Examlets page for policies on how to arrange a makeup if you forced to miss one due to a valid excuse.
Each CBTF test will be 30 minutes long, consisting of 5 multiple choice questions. For your final grade we will pick the best 5 (among your 6) scores. For example, if your 6 CBTF test scores are 100, 90, 85, 100, 70, 100, we will drop the lowest score (70), to give you a total of 475 (out of 500) for your CBTF tests. Your total score on CBTF tests counts towards 38% of the total grade.
There will 6 written tests on Monday and Tuesday evenings between 7:00pm and 8:50pm. These will be one hour tests, where you will have 3 problems to solve. Before each test, you will be told which day (Monday or Tuesday), and which room you are required to report to. If you need to switch the day you have been assigned to due to a valid reason, please inform us. You can take a test on a day different than the one you have been assigned to only if you have permission from the course staff. If you cannot take a test on either Monday or Tuesday, you can make it up by taking the final exam (more on this in the next paragraph).
The final exam will be a 3 hour test, in which you will be given a makeup version of each of the 6 tests that you were given during the semester. You can attempt any subset of these tests, and take as many as you can within the time limit. Thus, the final allows you to makeup missed tests, and poorly performances. You do not have to take the final. If you are happy with your performance on the written tests during the semester, you can choose to skip the final.
For each of the 6 written tests, you will have potentially two scores: one from the regular test during the semester, and one from the makeup version in the final. We will take the maximum of these two scores to give you the score for each of 6 written tests. To calculate the total for the written tests, we will pick the 5 (out of 6) best scores. This will give you the total for the written tests, which counts for 58% of the total grade. For example, suppose your scores for the 6 tests during the semester were 100, 50, 100, 100, 100, 0, and in the final your scores were 0, 40, 0, 100, 0, 40. First your scores for the 6 tests will be calculated by picking the maximum of two scores. In this case we will have 100, 50, 100, 100, 100, 40. Then among these we will pick the best 5, which gives you a total of 450 (out of 500) for the written tests.
Questions on CBTF tests and Written tests may include exact copies of Moodle 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.
Each discussion section you attend, you will get 0.5% of the total course grade. However you can get a maximum of 4% of the total course grade through discussion section attendance. This means if you attend 8 or more (out of 14) discussion sections, you will get the maximum of 4% from discussion attendance. If attend less than 8 sessions then your score will be appropriately scaled. For example, if you attend 3 sessions you will get 1.5%, 7 sessions will give you 3.5%, and 8 or more will get 4%.
Multiple choice questions will be posted on Moodle. These quizzes will not count towards your final grade. But they are not optional. Please take these quizzes as a way to prepare for the CBTF tests.
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 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.