Labs and Projects (50%): Hands-on opportunities to implement and explore concepts from lecture. These
are 1 - 2 week long projects which will let you exercise the material we are actively covering in lecture.
Exams (40%): There will be 3 required exams, at the dates listed on the exams
page. An optional final exam will be scheduled during the final exam period, which will have the same
weight as
your other exams. You can choose to take it to improve your exam grade, or if you're satisfied with your grade, you may choose not to. In that case, your exam grade will be the average of your 3 midterm grades.
Participation (10%): The most fail-safe way to succeed in this course is to come to every lecture ready
to engage in the material. The general flow of class will typically look like:
Friday: we wrap up our current topic and motivate the next one
Monday: we begin an in-class worksheet on the next topic
Wednesday: we implement the current data structure in Java
Friday: rinse and repeat
The worksheets described above will account for 6 of the 10 points of your participation grade. To help you stay
on track, every student is also required to check-in with their lecturer once per month outside of class in
office hours, which account for the remaining 4 points of the participation grade.
Late Policy
Projects: Most projects will officially be due Sundays, to incentivize finishing the project before the
start of labs for the next week. However, we understand that things happen and sometimes this deadline won't be
achievable. As such, every student begins the semester with an allotted 10 permissable 1 day extensions.
These extensions can be used on any project, up to a maximum of 3 days on any one project. For more
details, see here.
Exams: It is up to you to make sure that you are available at the above dates for the exams. We will
absolutely do our best to be flexible for students who give us plenty of warning that they won't be able to
attend the dates listed, but will be less forgiving to a student who doesn't show up to an exam without warning.
Participation: N/A (worksheets are due when they're due)