CS 503/591C Grading
Grades are broken down as follows:
- Final Exam (20%)
- Project work (50%)
- Milestones: absolute deadlines for demonstrating some capability.
- Widgets: specific project (of your design) that incorporates what we have been
learning in class in some creative way.
- A small number of homework assignments and pop quizzes (20%)
- Participation: class (5%) and lab (5%)
Grade Sheet
See the currently available grade sheet to see where you stand.
If you detect any errors or have any questions please feel free to talk to myself or the TAs. Here
are a few tips on parsing the notation:
- Hash ID is the 8 least significant bits of your student ID.
- MS stands for milestone. The first section indicates whether we have you down
as completing specific milestones.
- The next section is for quizes and homework assignments. At the top of the column, you will
find the amount that the particular assignment will contribute
to your grade, the maximum score possible, and a bit indicating
whether the item has been graded.
- The Demo section summarizes the widget demos that you have
completed. There, you will see a score and possibly a note
(e.g., indicating which milestone the widget counted for)
- The Adjustments column indicates any IP payments you
have payed or received.
- Your Total Score is out of 100 percent
- Your Score to Date is relative to the number of points
that have already been graded (but keep in mind that the 50
percent for "lab work" has already been counted here).
- Keep in mind that for some entries (e.g., the demos), we do not
have a grade for everyone (because different people are demoing
at different times). So - some adjustments will be necessary
in interpreting these numbers.
The best measure of your performance is how you are doing relative to the class mean.
Milestones
There are a total of six milestones that have been set for the duration of the semester, as
shown on the class schedule.
A milestone is a demonstration of some basic capability that we have
been learning about in class. If a milestone is not met by the
stated deadline, a 5 point penalty will be imposed. Milestones
must be demonstrated in groups of at most two people. In and of
themselves, you do not receive points for obtaining milestones.
Widgets
Widgets are miniature projects of your own design (within reason) for
which you receive points. You may accumulate up to a total of 50
points for the duration of the class (1 pt = 1 grade percentage
point). The value of a particular widget will be assigned at the time
of demonstration and will depend upon the complexity of the widget,
the quality of the work and the applicability to our overall class
project. Any number of people may participate in the building of a
widget (except when a widget is used to demonstrate a milestone). The
points obtained for a widget will be split evenly between the
participants.
Widgets can be demonstrated in phases and grow in complexity with each
phase. For example, your first widget might be an ambient lighting
device that displays different colors depending upon some ASCII input
from the serial port. You might then demonstrate a week later the
same widget that uses some sensor input to determine the color that it
generates. Several weeks later, you might develop an I2C interface
for your lighting device that allows it to cooperate with many other
devices. At each stage, you may demonstrate your widget and receive
additional points for that demonstration. In order to encourage
incremental design and demonstration, the sum total points received
over several demonstrations will generally be a little larger than if
you simply demonstrated your final widget.
Licensing Intellectual Property
Once you have developed a widget, you may license components of the
widget (e.g., circuit designs or code) to others in the class. These
components may be used in the creation of more complex widgets (except
when used to meet a milestone). You may ask for a small number
of points as a licensing fee (transfer of this fee may be accomplished
by all parties sending email to Patrick Deegan). When demonstrating
your new widget, you must be clear about any licenses that you are
using (whether you paid for the license or not). Points for this more
complex widget will be granted based on the progress made beyond the
original widget.
Note that if this gets out of hand, we reserve the right to cancel
this aspect of the grading.
Industrial Espionage
Industrial espionage is defined as obtaining intellectual property
without the explicit permission of the owner or without providing
appropriate acknowledgment of the owner (one of the best way to do
this for code is to document the history of the IP within the code
itself). Industrial espionage is considered cheating and will be
dealt with appropriately.
Developing Standards and Core Code
As we get into the latter half of the semester, many of our efforts
will be dedicated toward integrating our widgets into a common smart
space. This integration process will require that the class agree
upon certain protocol standards and implementations thereof. Those
students who are central to the development of these standards and
core code will also be able to receive widget points for their
efforts.
fagg@cs.umass.edu
Last modified: Fri Oct 24 10:44:02 2003