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 work page for how to arrange a makeup.
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 1-10. 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 11 or 12.
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 are sometimes exact copies of homework or study problems, or problems used in past terms. They might be entirely new. Or they might look similar to past problems 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 four 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.
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 two lowest homework grades 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.
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.