Assessment scheme#

The 2020 Semester 1 course assessment consists of the following components:

  • 5 small homework assignments. Combined, these are worth 15% of the final course mark. These will be due on Thursday in semester weeks 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 (see schedule further down on this page). In addition to submitting the solution to each homework, students are required to attend their scheduled lab session in a specific week and answer questions about their submission.
  • 1 larger assignment, accounting for 15% of the final course mark. This will be done over 3-4 weeks in the second half of the semester.
  • The Mid-Semester examination has been cancelled.
  • A final exam held during the end-of-semester exam period, worth 70% of the final course mark. The final exam may be in one or two parts, depending on scheduling and technical constraints.

Note that any submitted work may be subject to an additional oral examination. If the course conveners deem the outcome of the oral exam to be unsatisfactory, the assessment mark may change and further action may be taken if appropriate.

The assessment scheme may be modified up to the end of semester week 2. After that, it is fixed to what is shown on this page.

Variation for COMP6730 (master) students#

Students in the master-level course (COMP6730) will have to answer some extra questions on each of the exams. These extra questions are intended to demonstrate a deeper conceptual and theoretical understanding.

Final mark#

Your final course mark is the sum of your marks on all assessment components. To pass COMP1730 you must score at least 50 out of 100 marks. You must also score at least 40% in the final examination.

A supplementary exam will be offered to those students who have a final mark of at least 45 out of 100, but less than 50 out of 100, and those students who have a final mark of at least 50 out of 100, but scored less than 40% in the final examination.

There will be no scaling of individual assessment components (such as a single homework). However, final marks are moderated in the examiners’ meeting and may be scaled as a result of this moderation.

Deferred exams and special consideration#

If you are unable to attend a scheduled assessment (such as an exam) because of serious illness or other misfortune, you can apply for deferred examination (that is, permission to take the assessment at another time).

All applications are made on-line, through https://isis.anu.edu.au/.

For more information, see

If you have attended an assessment, but you think that due to some unforeseeable and unavoidable circumstances (such as serious illness or other misfortune) you were unable to do as well as you would have done under normal circumstances, then you can apply for special consideration. The application is made on-line through https://isis.anu.edu.au/. Please note that special consideration will never result in a change of your mark for an individual assessment item. It may be taken into account when determining the final course mark, particularly if it is close to a boundary (such as pass/fail).

Late assignments and extensions#

The homeworks and assignment will have a hard deadline. Submissions made after this deadline without an approved extension will receive zero marks. If you want to apply for an extension, you must do so before the deadline. Extensions can only be granted in unforeseeable circumstances beyond your control, and will require supporting documentation (e.g. serious illness supported by a medical certificate). Work or other extra-curricular commitments are not sufficient grounds for extensions.

Return of marks and appeal of marks#

We aspire to return assessment marks within two semester weeks of the final deadline (the due date for the assignment or the final lab group for homeworks). However, it is not always possible to achieve this aim.

Once marks for an assessment item are returned, you have 2 weeks to request a re-mark of the assessment item. After this period your mark will be considered final. If you request a re-mark, the entire assessment item will be re-marked, and your mark may stay the same, go up or go down.

Cheating#

The homeworks are individual. You must write your own homework submission, and you are expected to be able to explain every aspect of it.

Collaboration (including, of course, outright plagiarism), submitting solutions that you have found on the web, or enlisting others to work for you on assignments, are all forms of cheating, and will be reported. If you are found to have cheated, this will be recorded on all your transcripts and further action may be taken in line with the severity of the offense and ANU policy.

Make sure that you have read and understood the ANU policy on academic honesty and plagiarism.

Each student in this course is expected to be able to explain and defend any submitted assessment item. The course convener can conduct or initiate an additional interview about any submitted assessment item for any student.

If there is a significant discrepancy between different forms of assessment, (for example, homework and examinations) it may be treated as a case of suspected academic misconduct.

Homeworks#

Each homework assignment will be made available at the start of the week, and must be submitted by the indicated deadline. Deadlines are hard. No submissions made after the deadline without an approved extension will be accepted. Extensions can only be granted in unforeseeable circumstances beyond your control, and will require supporting documentation. If you do not submit the homework in time you may still gain partial marks from the in-lab homework assessment, though never more than 50% of the total homework mark.

Homeworks will be submitted through the course wattle page. We will not consider files sent via email or any other means. It is your responsibility to make sure that you know how to submit through wattle and that you submit the correct file. You can submit as many times as you want before the deadline, but remember that we can only see the last submission that you made.

In addition to submitting the homework solution, you must attend the lab indicated in the schedule below and answer some questions from the tutor about the assignment and your submission.

If you do not attend the lab or fail to answer the tutor’s questions, you will receive zero marks for the homework assignment, regardless of what you submitted. If, due to unforeseeable circumstances beyond your control (for example, illness or accident), you are not able to attend your lab session, you can apply for special consideration, following the normal procedure. Remember that you must do this as early as possible, and that you will be required to provide supporting documentation.

Note that although we give you over a week to do each homework, these are small problems, and our aim is that they should only take 1-2 hours to complete, if you have followed the lectures and done the lab exercises for the week beforehand. If you start directly with the homework with no preparation, you will probably find it harder.

Homework assignment schedule#

  • Homework 1

    Available: Week 2
    Due date: 11.55pm, Thursday 12 March 2020
    Assessed in lab: During Semester Week 4 (16 - 19 March)
    Worth: 2% of final mark.

  • Homework 2

    Available: Week 3
    Due date: 11:55pm, Thursday 19 March 2020
    Assessed in lab: During Semester Week 5 (23 - 26 March)
    Worth: 2% of final mark.

  • Homework 3

    Available: Week 4
    Due date: 11:55pm, Thursday 2 April 2020
    Assessed in lab: During Semester Week 6 (20 April - 24 April)
    Dates have changed as per announcement on Wattle forum 19/3/2020 Worth: 3% of final mark.

  • Homework 4

    Available: Week 6
    Due date: 11:55pm, Thursday 30 April 2020
    Assessed in lab: During Semester Week 8 (4 - 7 May)
    Dates have changed due to teaching pause Worth: 4% of final mark.

  • Homework 5

    Available: Week 8
    Due date: 11:55pm, Thursday 7 May 2020
    Assessed in lab: During Semester Week 9 (11 - 14 May)
    Dates have changed due to teaching pause Worth: 4% of final mark.

Assignment#

There is one larger (“project”) assignment. The assignment materials are available here. The assignment is due by the end of Sunday in semester week 11 (that is, the 31st of May, 2020, at 11:55 pm). This assignment is worth 15% of your final course mark.

Please note that dates have changed due to teaching pause

Just like with the homeworks the assignment deadline is hard. Submissions made after the deadline without an approved extension will receive zero marks. If you want to apply for an extension, you must do so before the deadline. Extensions can only be granted in unforeseeable circumstances beyond your control, and will require supporting documentation.

Mid-semester exam#

The mid-semester examination has been cancelled. The marks from the mid-semester examination (20%) have been added to the final examination.

Final exam#

COMP1730/COMP6730 will use two different examination formats for the final examination.

Each student will each get a choice between the following two options:

  • Option 1 - the default option, is a two-and-a-half hour open book examination - run online in Wattle at 2:50pm on Wednesday June 17 2020. The examination will count for 70% of the course grade. It is also a hurdle - you need to score at least 40% in the examination in order to pass the course.

  • Option 2 - has the same two-and-a-half hour Wattle examination as Option 1. However it will count for 35% of your grade instead of 70%. You will also have an individual oral examination which will count for the other 35%. Any student wishing to take this option will need to choose it in advance. A sign-up link in Wattle was made available for this in Week 12 and has now closed. The aggregate grade from the two examinations is a hurdle (but the individual examinations are not). You need an average of at least 40% across the two examinations in order to pass the course.

While the Wattle examination is open-book it is still an individual examination - any evidence of collaboration or other suspicious behaviour will be investigated and the usual academic misconduct processes will apply. If you are found to have collaborated with another student, sought help from a third party or cheated in any fashion, you may receive a mark of 0 for the examination and other penalties as appropriate under the academic honesty policy.

We will be conducting oral examinations to validate and verify the results. Most of these will be for randomly selected students, but we will also use them to validate results where we have concerns about academic integrity. If you are selected for an oral examination as part of this process, it will be compulsory and failure to attend may result in your examination mark being set to 0. We may adjust your marks or re-examine you if there is a significant discrepancy between your performance in the original exam(s) and your performance in the validation exam.

Special Examination Arrangements

If you have an education access plan (EAP) which contains provisions for special examination arrangements, you should have received an e-mail from the course convener with the revised details of your examination. If you haven’t received an e-mail, please contact comp1730@anu.edu.au and attach your EAP. Do this as soon as possible so we can make the appropriate arrangements.

Students in different time-zones

The scheduling of the final examination is fixed. For most students this will hopefully be a suitable time-slot. However, if your are in a part of the world where the examination will be running in the early hours of the morning, and you don’t want to sit the exam in the middle of the night, can you please apply for a deferred examination through the process described here. Since the deferred examinations will be individual oral examinations, there is far more scope to schedule them at a mutually convenient time.

Other Points:

  • We will not be using Proctorio.
  • The normal procedure for deferred examinations and special consideration will apply to all examinations.
  • All deferred and supplementary examinations will be conducted as individual oral examinations.
  • All oral examinations will be conducted in Teams.

These arrangements are still subject to change. If anything does change it will be noted here and in the course Wattle forums.

You can download a pre-exam checklist here.

Additional details of the examinations will be made available closer to the time (number of questions, rough mark breakdown, etc).

Oral Examinations#

The oral examinations will take place during the period 22 June through to 26 June.

Please note that during the oral examination you will require access to a computer with reliable internet, access to Microsoft Teams, a microphone, speakers (or a headset) and a camera. You will be required to show your student card to the camera at the beginning of the examination. If you don’t have a student card, then we will make alternative arrangements, however you will be required to show other ID instead (preferably a passport).

The oral examinations will run for approximately 20-30 minutes.

Supplementary and deferred exam#

Details of the supplementary and deferred examinations will be made available in due course.

However all supplementary and deferred examinations will be individual oral examinations.

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