The work you must do for this course includes
You are responsible for keeping an eye on your PrairieLearn 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.
If the scores you are receiving alarm you, seek help.
Video lectures will be posted each week. However, you are also expected to prepare for each lecture by doing the posted readings. Basic material (e.g. basic definitions) is typically not covered in the videos. (The first-week videos are more comprehensive because we are just getting started.)
There will be weekly examlets. If you check out the grading formula, these account for most of your final course average. We plan 12 weekly examlets, each 50 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:
Each individual part of the final is the same length and worth the same amount as a normal examlet (so the whole final - both parts together - is worth twice as much as each of the earlier examlets).
At the end of the semester (most likely the last week of the semester), you can optionally choose to retake one of the examlets. A selection form will be posted. Your retake score will replace your original score if it is better, or fill in a zero if you never made up a missed examlet.
Before the first examlet, familiarize yourself with the basic CS 173 exam instructions. Only the most critical parts will be explicitly included on the individual exams.
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 are expected to attend the tutorial you are registered for. During tutorials, you will work on problems in small groups, getting feedback from course staff. Bring the manual of discussion problems and a notebook for recording your work.
The expectation is that everyone present at a tutorial will receive 100% credit for that week's tutorial problems. However, we reserve the right to take off points (or even give zero credit) if behavior during tutorial 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 tutorial. In addition, we will drop one more tutorial. Specifically, if we hold k tutorials over the course of the term (not counting week 1), you will receive full credit if you attended at least k-1.
Weekly homework consists of
The autograded homework is due 11:59pm each Wednesday on PrairieLearn. You are expected to do the autograded homework on your own. You may not ask other people (or the piazza forum) for the answers to those questions (or minor variations of them). However, you may freely discuss general concepts with friends or on piazza. You may also get specific help from course staff e.g. at office hours or using a private post on piazza.
You should do all the posted study problems on each topic to prepare for the corresponding exam. Each week, you will submit one of these problems, typed, on PrairieLearn. It is also due 11:59pm each Wednesday and will be graded for good-faith completion (not correctness). You are allowed to freely discuss the study problems with other people in the class. However, the typed-up submission should be your own work (e.g. written in your own words).
We'll drop your lowest homework grade, and your lowest study problem grade, when computing your final average.