Assessment scheme#

The 2021 Semester 1 course assessment consists of the following components:

  • 5 small homework assignments. Combined, these are worth 15% of the final course mark. These are due at 9am Monday in semester weeks 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9 (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 those weeks to discuss their submission.
  • 1 larger assignment, accounting for 25% of the final course mark. This will be done over 3 weeks in the second half of the semester.
  • A final exam held during the end-of-semester exam period, worth 60% of the final course mark. The final exam may be in one or two parts, depending on scheduling and technical constraints. The final examination is a hurdle - students must score at least 40% in the final examination in order to pass the course.

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 in the final exam. They may also have an additional question to answer on the project assignment. 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 COMP1730/6730 you must score at least 50 out of 100 marks.

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. Students who receive an overall mark of 50 or more, but who fail the final examination hurdle will also receive a supplementary examination.

Generally, 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 examination 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 need to temporarily change lab groups in a week where homework discussions are due to take place - you must let us know by 12pm Monday so we can make the necessary arrangements. If something unexpected occurs after this point (for example you become unwell), you should apply for a deferred examination through the process described above.

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 a specific 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 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.

Please also be aware that because of the discussion requirements for the homework assignments - if an extension of more than a day or two is warranted - we will normally make the assignment redeemable for the final examination instead.

Return of marks and appeal of marks#

We aim 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.

We do not remark exams (or any other assessments). What we will do is correct errors in marking. An error is one of two things:

  1. The question has a unique, unambiguous answer, and the marking is not consistent with that answer. (For example, if the answer to a question is “no” and you have answered “yes” and we’ve given you marks for that, then that is clearly an error.) Any question that involves describing, explaining, or where the marker has to make a judgement of the quality and/or clarity of your answer is by definition not unambiguous.
  2. Your answer is identical to that of another student, but we have marked the two of you differently.

In either case, you must demonstrate that an error has occurred (for example, by providing the name and UID of the student whose answer is identical to yours).

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. In serious cases you may even have your enrollment at ANU terminated.

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

If you are unsure about what is required of you with respect to academic honesty, please ask any of the course staff or send an e-mail to the course e-mail address. We would much rather discuss the matter with you prior to something occuring than have to resolve it through the academic misconduct process.

Each student in this course is expected to be able to explain and defend any submitted assessment item. As mentioned above, any submitted work may be subject to an additional oral examination, which may result in a change of mark, and, if there is a significant discrepancy between different forms of assessment (for example, homework and examinations, or submitted assignment and oral exam) this 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. As noted above, given the need for the discussion component of the homeworks - any request for an extension of more than a day or two will usually result in us making the marks redeemable for the final examination instead.

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 discuss your submission with the tutor.

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 you need to change lab groups for a week in which a homework discussion is due to take place - you must contact us no later than 12:00pm Monday so we can make the appropriate arrangements.

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 deferred examination, following the normal procedure. You must do this as early as possible (normally with 72 hours), and you will be required to provide supporting documentation.

Note that although we give you two weeks 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: 1st March
    Due date: Monday the 15th of March, at 9am
    Assessed in lab: During semester week 4
    Worth: 2% of final mark.

  • Homework 2

    Available: 8th March
    Due date: Monday the 22nd of March, at 9am
    Assessed in lab: During semester week 5
    Worth: 2% of final mark.

  • Homework 3

    Available: 15th March
    Due date: Monday the 29th of March, at 9am
    Assessed in lab: During semester week 6
    Worth: 3% of final mark.

  • Homework 4

    Available: 29th March
    Due date: Monday 26th of April, at 9am
    Assessed in lab: During semester week 8
    Worth: 4% of final mark.

  • Homework 5

    Available: 19th April
    Due date: Monday 3rd of May, at 9am
    Assessed in lab: During semester week 9
    Worth: 4% of final mark.

Project assignment#

There is one larger (“project”) assignment. This assignment is worth 25% of your final course mark.

The assignment details are available on the Course Wattle Site.

Mid-semester examination#

There will be no mid-semester exam this semester.

Final examination#

The final examination for COMP1730/COMP6730 will be held at 2:50pm (Canberra Time) on Thursday 10 June, 2021. The examination will be run online in Wattle. The examination will be open book. The examination will count for 60% of the course grade. The examination is also a hurdle - you need to score at least 40% in the examination in order to pass the course.

The duration of the examination is 3 hours and 10 minutes (190 minutes total). This consists of 3 hours of writing time, and 10 minutes to download files, upload answers, submit things with some spare time, etc.

While the 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.

You may also choose to record your examination attempt. If you are asked to validate your examination attempt, you may provide us with your recording. If we are satisified that the recording demonstrates that you have completed the examination in accordance with the academic honesty policy and examination arrangements, we will waive the requirement for you to sit an oral examination to validate your performance.

Special Examination Arrangements

If you have an education access plan (EAP) which contains provisions for special examination arrangements, you will receive an e-mail from the course convener with the revised details of your examination. If you haven’t received an e-mail, by Thursday June 3, please contact comp1730@anu.edu.au and attach your EAP, 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. The deferred examinations will likely be individual oral examinations, so there may be a bit more flexibility about when they are scheduled.

Other Points:

  • We will not be using Proctorio (but see note above about recording of examinations).
  • The normal procedure for deferred examinations and special consideration will apply to all examinations.

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).

Supplementary and deferred exam#

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

However, they will normally take place in Week 1 of Semester 2, and will likely be individual oral examinations.

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