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COSC 237: Assignments: Expectations and Gradings

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You can't learn programming from a lecture - you will need to do it. This means that completion of the assignments is absolutely critical for success in this course.

That said, it is also likely that you may find that you get stuck on various assignments. That's not surprising. The model that we will use for the assignments in this course is intended to help you build an understaindng of exactly what it is that you don't understand, in the hopes that building such an understanding will help you learn.

Specifically, some suggestions, guidelines, and policies:

• Submit your assignments on time: An assignment that is half-done and on-time is more valuable than something that is perfectly done but late. Late assignments will receive 0%. Period.


• Be prepared to put time into the work outside of class: The one-hour lab period each week is intended as a time for you to work on assignments in an environment where I'm around for support. The lab is not intended to be the full-extent of the time that you spend on the assignments. If you don't put in enough time outside of class, you will likely find it hard to do well in this course.


• Duration: Some assignments will be one-week long, somemay be multiple weeks. Still others may build upon your work from previous assignments. Assignments such as these will not be "double jeopardy" - you will not be faced with the handicap of being able to do assignment 10 because you stumbled on assignment 9. In these cases, I will provide solutions that you can work from.


• Pairing: Research shows that pair programming can be helpful. If you want to work with a partner, that's fine: you can submit one assignment with two names. Groups of 3 or more are not allowed. I may require pair programming in some cases.


• Reflection: Reflection means thinking about what you have learned and what you have not learned. I may ask you to answer questions that encourage you to think about what you have learned on an assignment, or to discuss where you ran into difficulties. Such questions should be answered along with the programming challenges.


• Grading: Grading individual assignments is usually not an informative process in a class such as this. I will provide you with feedback - probably by creating a file in your class file space - for each assignment, but likely not for each problem. If you ever have any questions about why you were given the grade that you were given, please feel free to ask me.