Computer Science 121 Grading - Spring 2007

General Weighting

• 5 projects (45%),

  For team projects, about 2/3 of the grade is based on the over-all product, and 1/3 is based on your individual contributions. You will receive a detailed description of how each project will be scored when that project is assigned.

• mid-term exam (20%),
• final exam (25%)
• Daily quizzes (10%)
• Bonus for (significant) Class Participation

Rationale

I have two goals in grading:

1. to assess your mastery of the material.
2. to encourage you go get as much as possible out of this class.

The greatest portion of the grade (90%) is evenly divided between exams (your mastery of concepts) and projects (your ability to apply skills and techniques). On the projects, I am weighting the overall result more than the individual components because:

1. in the real world you will be judged, not on the basis of your individual efforts, but on the overall quality of your results.
2. teams are not merely a technique for allowing individuals to do less work. A well functioning team can do work that none of the individuals would have been able to do.
3. work division and cooperation are skills that are taught in this class. I expect to see the results of the applications of those skills.

I am using the remaining 10% as a coercive tool, to encourage you to get the maximum benefit out of the course:

• Years of experience have consistently taught me that the greatest single predictor of how much a student will get from a lecture is how well they understood the material before the start of the lecture.

  I have found (and student surveys regularly confirm) that giving daily quizzes on the assigned reading gets students to do the reading before the lecture, and greatly enhances learning.

  I attempt to choose quiz questions, based on key concepts, that should be trivial to answer based on a single reading. Even though the questions are simple, you can earn double credit for an answer that impresses me as particularly insightful.

• Non-trivial concepts cannot be usefully mastered merely by reading about them. Their implications and applications must be explored. In class discussions are the only place where I have the opportunity to observe this process.

If I assign homework, it is because I believe there are areas where you will have difficulty mastering the material without additional work. I do it, not so that I will have something else to grade, but so that you will be able to test your mastery of a tricky subject before you see it on the exam. As such, I will correct your homework assignments (to help you understand the problems), but they will not count towards your final course grade (other than enabling you to do better on the exams).

Last updated: January 12, 2007