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Grading
Information
Homework
By Thursday afternoon I will post an
assignment to the Schedule page, due the next
day on Friday at 5:00pm. The assignment will
consist of a single Python program to be
emailed to me at svandervelde@stlawu.edu
as an attachment. More detailed instructions
will be included with each assignment. These
programs are worth 7 points each, but will
depreciate at a rate of one point per hour
past the deadline. I do not accept late
homework; however, I do drop the lowest grade,
which gives you the option of foregoing
homework some week. (Save this until you
really need it!) Since your programs
will become more intricate as the semester
progresses, I strongly recommend that you
begin working on them by Thursday evening at
the latest.
Your programs MUST represent
your own work. You may refer to and utilize
portions of code that have been developed
during class. However, under no circumstances
should you look at or copy code from any other
source, including your classmates or the
internet. Furthermore you may not permit other
students to look at or copy your code. Ideally
program design will also be your own work;
however, you may consult with either myself or
Spencer Timerman (our course TA) or other QRC
mentors for assistance in this respect.
Note that Spencer will be on hand in the QRC
on Thursdays 9:00-11:00pm for this purpose,
and I will be available in my office for much
of Friday afternoon. (Call X5946 first
if you want to check whether I'm in.)
Any assistance that you receive should be
carefully documented as a comment at the start
of your program.
Creations
On a regular basis I will ask you to come
up with an original idea for a simple program,
then develop the code to implement that
idea. Guidelines for each creation will
be posted to the Schedule page prior to
that class. I will set aside the final
thirty or so minutes of class for each
creation exercise. Part of the appeal of
programming is the ability to make ideas come
to life; the purpose of this component of the
course is to give you the opportunity to
experience this process on a regular basis.
Quizzes
Near the start of class on every other
Tuesday (other than midterm exam weeks) I will
hold a thirty minute in-class written quiz
based on material covered since the last quiz
or exam. Questions will include
predicting the output of a few lines of code,
finding the bug in a sample program, and
writing (on paper) short programs to
accomplish certain tasks. You will be
randomly seated for all quizzes and
exams. Our quizzes are scheduled for
Sept 11, Sept 25, Oct 23, Nov 6, and Dec 4.
Exams
There will be two midterm exams in this
course, scheduled for October 9 (just before
October break) and November 15 (just before
Thanksgiving break). You will have a
total of two hours to work on each exam.
Just like the quizzes, exams will involve only
written responses; in other words, you will
not be asked to program on an actual
computer. There will be no final exam
for our section. Instead you will
imagine, design, and write a substantial
program as the crowning experience in this
course, described next.
Project
During the final three weeks of this course
you will develop a game having a graphical
component, either animation or interactive
display, based on the techniques that we will
have covered by that point. The project
will be due by Wednesday of exam week and will
be graded on a variety of aspects including
program efficiency, design, and creativity of
concept. I will provide more details
regarding the project when the time draws
near.
Overall Grade
There are seven creations (4 points
each), nine homework assignments (7 points
each), five quizzes (20 points each), two
midterm exams (80 points each), and a
programming project (40 points) on which your
overall grade will be based. I drop your
lowest homework, creation, and quiz grade, so
there are a total of 360 points. I will
also weight your higher midterm exam grade
twice as much as the lower one. I
guarantee at the very least the following
cutoff for grades based on the percentage of
points that you earn during the semester: cutoff
= 14*grade + 38. (At some point
in the semester we will write a program to
create a table which gives the cutoff for each
possible grade.) I will also provide a
current average whenever I return a midterm
exam, so that you can keep track of your
progress throughout the semester.
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