We realize the stress due to the university shutdown and the coronavirus. So, dedicated staff will continue to provide support to help students manage their academics and well-being. If you are experiencing anxiety or stress, please reach out to Student Counselling & Development at 416-736-5297 or visit the website (see below) to learn about remote access of services. https://counselling.students.yorku.ca/

Other mental health & wellness resources are available here: https://mhw.info.yorku.ca/resources/resources-at-york/students/.

Monday March 23, 2020. On March 16th, in accordance with Senate rules, we changed the kind and weights to #2 below (no final exam). <hi> This remains in place.</hi>

However, as an alternative, for those students who demand to be graded according to the original grading scheme, we are also offering an online exam (see #3 below) at the scheduled exam time for this course.

In both cases, you are required to submit the Project and Lab5/undo-redo by the stated deadlines.

Work completed before March 16th is indicated with a tick ✓.

• Last date to submit term work Project (as a team) and Lab5/Chess-undo-redo (individually): Monday April 06.
• The official deadline to submit the Project and Lab5 is April 06, but you may submit until 2.00pm Monday April 13th, without penalty.

Specification for the online exam option (#3): Like any final exam – this will be on all the course materials, i.e. all lectures including video lectures & slides to the end of the course, lab work required readings etc. It will be a multiple choice online exam, “open-book” (you may consult your course notes, labs, readings, tools etc.) but it must be solely your own individual work (no outside help) in accordance with academic integrity rules. If you login and submit, this is a demand and commitment on your part to be graded using this option. The instructors reserve the right to require that you undertake an additional oral Zoom exam – in which you will be required to explain your answers in order to obtain a passing grade, solely at the discretion of the instructors. Date of online exam: Tuesday April 14, 2-5pm.

Monday March 16, 2020.

<hi>Proposed New grading scheme in the light of University rules for Corvid-19 starting March 16th</hi>. Course Directors are permitted to to make changes to the kind and weight of assignments (including tests and examinations). Labtest2 and the in-person exam have been cancelled. The proposed new grading scheme is below.

Work completed before March 16th is indicated with a tick ✓.

• Last date to submit term work Project (as a team) and Lab5/Chess-undo-redo (individually): Monday April 6.

The main work to be submitted going forward is the Project and the Lab5 Assignment (Chess-undo-redo) which you can do from home, using resources such as the online lecture videos, online Zoom labs and TA hours, and the forum. The prep for the Lab5 Assignment is the same as the prep for Labtest2 (now cancelled). See also BON design documents.

Use your EECS login at this wiki to access the various online resources.

• Zoom Online Labs
• Zoom TA hours
• Online lecture videos & slides

Please ensure that you are familiar with <hi>academic integrity rules</hi>. In the Project, you may only consult with your team member (if there is one) and Lab5/undo-redo must be done on your own. Think of this as supervised exam rules.

The University has stated that as an alternative, students will be able to choose to write a deferred supervised written exam. In such a case, you may choose to be graded according to the original grading scheme. This is only so, provided you submit this Project and the Lab5 Assignment (chess/undo-redo) by the due dates for this course. In such a case, the Lab5 Assignment will be used for your grade in place of the cancelled Labtest2.

update 18 March 2020 from the Senate: “At this time, it is unknown when it will be possible to hold in-person exams”.

• Monday January 6 - Winter Classes Start. You are required to do Lab0 in this week.
• February 15-21 - Reading Week
• Friday March 13 - Last date to drop course without receiving a grade
• Monday April 6 - Last date to submit term work
• Labtest1 - Feb 13 (Z) and Feb 14 (M). Must attend your scheduled lab session.
  • Optional make-up Labtest1 on March and March 6.
• Labtest2 - March 19 (Z) and March 20 (M). Must attend your scheduled lab session.
• Sunday April 5 - Classes end
• April 7-25 - Exams. This is closed book exam, but you may bring one data sheet (US Letter, both sides).

Due Dates:

• Lab0: Friday, 10 January, submit by 3pm. Graded, but does not count towards final grade.
• Lab1: Friday January 24, submit by 3pm (strict).
• Lab2: Friday February 7, 3pm (strict).
• Lab3: Friday February 28, 3pm (strict).
• Lab4: Friday March 13, 3pm (strict).
• Project: Friday 3 April 3pm (strict)

Note that there are TA office hours Tuesday mornings and Friday afternoons. See tab Contact/Office hours on the side bar.

Please report any issues with your grading within one week of receiving your grade/feedback.

Labs are due on Fridays at 3pm (strict). Lab assistants will be available in LAS2056 from 1pm to 3pm on Fridays. For example, Lab1 is due on Friday Jan 24 at 3pm.

Before doing Lab1, you will want to familiarize yourself with Eiffel, the Eiffel Method and the EiffelStudio IDE. See here.

Readings

• The Required Readings listed above are are available to you online in the course SVN (be sure to sign in on this wiki bottom/right).
• Review basic Eiffel Syntax/semantics here. Spend your first week obtaining familiarity with the syntax and familiar use of the EiffelStudio IDE. You will need it.

This course is work intensive and it is expected that you will be doing at least 10 hours of work per week.

At times (e.g. in the Project) you are allowed to work on your own or in a team of at most two. If you are working with a partner, be sure to create a shared storage area (e.g. a private GitHub repository) where you both have access to the design/code. You will want to ensure that you each understand the other's work. In case a partner withdraws from the course or does not contribute, you are still responsible to ensure that you submit the work for the complete project on your own (with an explanation of the context in which this happened).

You can view your marks

Section Z.

Section M.

You may obtain feedback on your Labs via the command line by doing:

>feedback 3311 Lab1

• Common Grading Scheme for Undergradate Faculties

For each grading unit you are assigned a raw mark score that ranks you in the class. Also, you will be provided with a mapping from your raw mark score to a letter grade. The raw mark score is not a grade as it is merely used to rank you in the class (so, e.g. a raw mark score of 76 might be a C, not a B+, after the mapping is applied). The mapping will be supplied to you at the same time that the grading unit is handed back to you. The final grade is computed from the cut-offs as shown in: Examples of Final Grade Calculation using Cuttoffs

On marks and marking

• A raw mark numerical score on a test assignment or lab is never “out of” anything, in that it is not interpreted or converted to a percentage. It is the sum of scores assigned to questions, occasionally individually adjusted where appropriate. A numerical raw mark numerical score is used to compute the letter grade in cases where there are many sub-questions in a single piece of work.
• Marks are not “belled” or “curved”, in the sense of being adjusted to approximate a normal distribution. They usually aren't normally distributed anyway in statistical terms and I know of no statistical transformation such as normalization which would make the scores more meaningful and/or accurate.
• You can't “lose marks” for anything - you didn't have them to begin with. Letter grades are assigned to raw mark numerical scores on a basis which I feel is both fair and reflects the meaning of each letter grade as determined by the York Senate and published in the York Undergraduate Programmes Calendar and referenced above.
• Only the letter grades have meaning as determined by the cut-offs posted as each assignment unit is handed back.
• Marks are not a judgement on your intelligence or diligence or good intentions; they are just a reflection of the work you handed in. If you were very busy with other work, or recuperating from an illness, or emotionally stressed, it would not be surprising if your mark was lower than under optimal conditions. However, such reasons do not provide a basis for altering the mark, which is a description of what you did, not why you did it.
• Work that is submitted late generally receives a grade of F.

Examples of Final Grade Calculation using Cuttoffs

GPA and Letter Grades

A GPA (grade point average) is a number between 0 and 9. A 5 does not mean that you got 5/9 = 55%. The meaning of this number is derived by mapping it to the appropriate letter grade. The following is a copy of the York University official grading scheme for translating from a letter grade to a GPA and back again.

A+ GPA=9 or (8.5 .. 9) Exceptional - Thorough knowledge of concepts and/or techniques and exceptional skill or great originality in the use of those concepts and techniques in satisfying the requirements of a piece of work or course.

A GPA=8 or (7.5..8.4) Excellent - Thorough knowledge of concepts and/or techniques together with a high degree of skill and/or some elements of originality in satisfying the requirements of a piece of work or course.

B+ GPA=7 or (6.5..7.4) Very Good - Thorough knowledge of concepts and/or techniques together with a fairly high degree of skill in the use of those concepts and techniques in satisfying the requirements of a piece of work or course.

B GPA=6 or (5.5..6.4) Good - Good level of knowledge of concepts and/or techniques together with a considerable skill in using them in satisfying the requirements of a piece of work or course.

C+ GPA=5 or (4.5..5.4) Competent - Acceptable level of knowledge of concepts and/or techniques together with considerable skill in using them to satisfy the requirements of a piece of work or course.

C GPA=4 or (3.5..4.4) Fairly Competent - Acceptable level of knowledge of concepts and/or techniques together with some skill in using them to satisfy the requirements of a piece of work or course.

D+ GPA=3 or (2.5..3.4) Passing - Slightly better than minimal knowledge of required concepts and/or techniques together with some ability to use them in satisfying the requirements of a piece of work or course.

D GPA=2 or (1.5..2.4) Barely Passing - Minimum knowledge of concepts and/or techniques needed to satisfy the requirements of a piece of work or course.

E GPA=1 or (0.5..1.4) Marginally failing

F GPA=0 or (0..0.4) Failing

GPA vs Percentages

Some instructors prefer using GPA to combine marks and some instructors prefer to use percentages. It is a matter of preference. Because there is a nonlinear (see your linear algebra text) relationship between GPA and percentages, you may get very different answers. There are cases when each is to your advantage. In our case we use the cut-off method (see above).

• If you miss the deadline for the Labs, or project then your grade will be an F.

• If you fail to write a Labtest, your grade will be an F – unless the York attending physician's statement (July 2017) is filled out in detail and the physician certifies that you were unable to write due to illness. You must inform the instructor immediately you are able to, and present the Physician's statement to the instructor immediately on your recovery.

• The entire Lab or Quiz may be regraded. Similar requirements apply to the exam.

If you have any issues with your grade, whether on Labs or Labtests, please print out your feedback, add your name and Prism login, write down clearly and precisely where and what your grading issues are, and hand the feedback to your instructor or TA during official office hours. This must be done within one week from the date the grades are announced. Your request must spell out the relevant part or section of the assignment what grade you did get, and what you feel your grade should be for that part.

Thus you want your Lab, or Labtest regraded, then within one week of receiving the feedback do the following:

• Write out precisely and concisely your concerns.
• Staple your written concerns to your feedback document
• Return the above to the instructor within one week of receiving your feedback.

At times (e.g. in the Project) you are allowed to work on your own or in a team of at most two. If you are working with a partner, be sure to create a shared storage area (e.g. a private GitHub repository) where you both have access to the design/code. You will want to ensure that you each understand the other's work. In case a partner withdraws from the course or does not contribute, you are still responsible to ensure that you submit the work for the complete project on your own (with an explanation of the context in which this happened).