# Assessment
> The model behind the three assignments and how everything is marked: the shared rubric, what you submit, deadlines, extensions, and appeals
The formal assessment rules are ANU policy: penalties, the extension and ECA
procedures, appeals and their deadlines. They live in the course's Programs and
Courses entry
([COMP4020](https://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/2026/course/COMP4020/Second%20Semester/9056),
[COMP8020](https://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/2026/course/COMP8020/Second%20Semester/9057)).
This page covers the course-wide practical detail --- the things true of every
deliverable. Each assignment's brief and each week's crit page carry their own
specifics, and this page links to them rather than repeating them. One rule up
front: there are no late submissions.
On this page: [the overview](#assessment-overview) ·
[what you submit](#what-you-submit) · [how it's marked](#how-its-marked) ·
[the assignments](#the-assignments) ·
[where this model comes from](#where-this-model-comes-from)
## Assessment overview
Four deliverables make up the final mark. There are no hurdles: your grade is
the weighted sum of the tasks below, and 50% or more overall is a pass --- ANU's
[grading scale](https://www.anu.edu.au/students/program-administration/assessments-exams/grading-scale)
sets out what each letter grade means.
| Task | Weight | Due |
| ---------------------------- | ------ | -------------------------- |
| Studio engagement (10 crits) | 20% | weekly, weeks 2--11 |
| Assignment 1 | 20% | noon Mon 17 August 2026 |
| Assignment 2 | 20% | noon Mon 21 September 2026 |
| Final project (Assignment 3) | 40% | noon Mon 9 November 2026 |
The "studio engagement" mark comes from the ten weekly crits, scored **2% each**
across weeks 2--11: one mark for shipping by that week's cutoff, one for your
contribution in the session --- see
[how the crit marks work](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/topics/studio-crit-model/#how-the-marks-work). The
three assignments each publish their own brief and rubric on the
[assessments page](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/assessments/).
Every deliverable on one timeline: hover over (or tab to) any marker for the
details, and click through to the page for it.
## What you submit
Every prototype is its own repository, generated for you from the course starter
template and waiting in the course GitHub org --- you never create course repos
yourself (the [onboarding page](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/topics/onboard/#6-meet-your-first-repo) covers
accepting the org invitation and the `start` skill that clones each week's
repo). Your "live URL" is always the one derived from your repo --- the default
GitHub Pages URL (`comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io//`) up to crit
6, `.fly.dev` from crit 7 onwards. That URL is the URL of record, where
demos, marking and the crit runsheet all point; custom domains aren't supported
for submissions.
Repo-per-week has one exception. From week 9 the crits work on
[the final project](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/assessments/final-project/) itself, so those three crits
and the final-project submission all live in one repository.
Your repo starts **private**: while you're building, peers can't read your
source, your prompts or your harness. You can still see your WIP on your local
dev server, and the starter template's `check` scripts give you the same
feedback CI will give you later. Before your cutoff, flip the repo public with
the course `/ship` skill --- the day before your crit is the norm, and flipping
early costs nothing, since you can keep pushing until the cutoff. When you do,
the whole repo goes public, full commit history and CI logs included.
A day out from your cutoff, an automated check DMs you on Ed if your repo isn't
yet public with a working deploy. It's a nudge, not a safety net: a repo still
private at the cutoff hasn't shipped, and the shipped mark reads from what the
post-cutoff sweep finds --- see
[in-crit prototype marks](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/topics/studio-crit-model/#in-crit-prototype-marks).
The deployed artefact is what gets marked, and the repository is how we read
your code; we don't (in general) pull and build it ourselves. The exact
artefacts are listed in each brief, but the shape is consistent. Your repo
holds:
- **the prototype**: your source, in whatever software stack you chose, that
builds and deploys to the live site. It's assessed in the marking environment
described below.
- **the checks** (`spec/`): run locally with `pnpm check` while you build, and
in CI on every push once the repo is public. The starter ships the
**invariants** --- what's true of any good website whatever the week asks:
landmarks, headings, a declared language, alt text, and from crit 7 an
automated accessibility floor (axe's rule set). Where those live depends on
the starter: the Assignment 2 course-site starter runs them (axe included)
inside `pnpm build`, and its `spec/` ships a single course-data check instead.
The final project ships only two: the app answers at `/`, and `/readme/`
publishes your `README.md`; its accessibility checks are yours. The rest is
yours to write: turning each week's published spec into tests is part of the
work. Green checks at the sweep are worth half of that week's shipped mark,
and any extra linters, tests or performance checks you wire up run from the
same entrypoint. The CI workflow (`.github/workflows/checks.yml`) is part of
your harness too: if a step misfires on a site with nothing wrong in it, fix
the step. The shipped checks stay as shipped.
- **your reflection** (`reflections/`, crit weeks only): a short markdown file
answering the two standing prompts: _what was the breakthrough that moved the
work forward?_ and _what did this work change about who I want to be as a
software developer?_ One entry per crit, named for the crit it answers with
the same number as the repo: `crit-1.md` in `comp4020-crit1-`; the
final-project repo holds one per crit. It has to be there by the cutoff for
that week's prototype to count as shipped, and the sweep reads no other
filename. Assignment repos carry none: the assignment's written account is its
`PROCESS.md`, and the retro crit presents from that.
- **your process overview** (`PROCESS.md`): your own account, written by you for
a reader, of how you got from the brief to the harness and agentic workflow
behind this submission. Cite commits as you go, as links whose text is the
hash or range and whose target is the GitHub commit or compare URL. Uncited
claims don't count as evidence, and markers don't trawl the repo for what you
didn't cite. The starter's template shows the shape, and `pnpm check:evidence`
verifies the bundle before you ship; [word counts](#word-counts) below covers
lengths and screenshots.
- **your `CLAUDE.md`**: the harness you built to direct the work, carried
forward and grown from one deliverable to the next.
- **your commit history**: the record of how the work actually came together.
Commit as you go --- a trail that grew alongside the code is far more
convincing than one big dump at the end.
The course `preflight` skill can walk you through this checklist before you hand
in, so nothing is missing when your tutor picks it up.
## How it's marked
Marking asks two questions, and keeps them separate. The checks answer whether
it works, while you build: objective backpressure, run locally and in CI. A
person answers everything that calls for judgement: markers read your process,
look at the live site, and talk with you in the crit. No automation ever judges
the quality of your work --- when anyone can prompt a plausible-looking result
in minutes, an automated grade would just reward plausibility.
The weekly crit marks sit outside that split, because nobody's opinion is in
either of them: the shipped mark is a record an automated sweep captures and
your tutor confirms --- did you push, is it live, is the reflection there, are
the checks green --- and your contribution mark is a call about the session, not
about your repo. See
[how the crit marks work](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/topics/studio-crit-model/#how-the-marks-work).
### Marking environment
Prototypes are assessed live on the web, in a fixed environment: **the latest
stable Chrome**, visiting your deployed URL with the source open on GitHub in
another tab, at **two viewports**:
- **1920×1080** --- desktop
- **390×844** --- phone (the iPhone preset in Chrome DevTools' device toolbar)
Both are full marking environments: everything the brief asks for has to work
cleanly at both. Most of the web's traffic arrives on a phone, and a prototype
that falls apart there hasn't shipped.
Those are _viewports_, not monitor sizes --- reproduce both exactly in Chrome
DevTools' device toolbar. "It works on my machine" is not a defence: the
deployed artefact is the submission.
## The assignments
The three assignments carry 80% of the course between them, and each is the
weekly crit loop run longer: a prototype built with an agentic workflow against
a meatier provocation and deployed at a public URL, with the same repo anatomy
(set out under [what you submit](#what-you-submit) above) and the deadline in
the role of the cutoff. The submission is the deployed state of your last commit
at the deadline. **[Assignment 1](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/assessments/assignment-1/)** and
**[Assignment 2](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/assessments/assignment-2/)** (static, 20% each) are a
deliberate-practice loop --- build, reflect, build again --- on the same canvas
and the same rubric; **[the final project](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/assessments/final-project/)**
(full-stack, 40%) carries the same skills onto a new substrate, with the stack
yours to choose and justify. Each brief has the full picture: the provocation,
the rubric bands, and what's specific to that assignment. Choosing the
[no-AI route](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/topics/software-and-platforms/#going-off-piste) changes none of
this: same specs, same rubric, same repo anatomy.
Each assignment's identity is its provocation: playful, a little subversive, and
published only when the assignment opens. Provocations in this course satirise,
expose or stress-test a thing; they don't ship real harm at real users. The
reveal is a moment: the whole cohort gets the same brief at the same time, and
the [gallery](#the-gallery) at the end shows what they each did with it.
The week each static assignment lands, the crit is a retro (retrospective): a
brief demo, then the breakthrough that made the assignment click, shown as a
before/after and drawn from your `PROCESS.md`. The retro carries that week's
crit mark --- see
[in-crit prototype marks](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/topics/studio-crit-model/#in-crit-prototype-marks).
### Marking rubric
Every assignment is marked on the same three things:
- **process**: how clearly a reader can see how you got from the brief to the
harness and agentic workflow behind the submission --- your `PROCESS.md`, the
`CLAUDE.md` and `spec/` checks behind it, and the commit history. A marker
follows the overview's citations into the history, and claims it doesn't
corroborate don't count.
- **artefact**: whether the deployed thing works, and is good, at both marking
viewports.
- **response**: the answer the whole submission gives to the brief, scoped and
concise, and at its best pointed and surprising.
Each criterion is marked out of 100 against a published band, then weighted and
summed into three holistic judgements. What changes across the three tasks is
the weighting:
| Task | Process | Artefact | Response |
| ---------------- | ------- | -------- | -------- |
| Assignment 1 & 2 | 45% | 20% | 35% |
| Final project | 50% | 25% | 25% |
Process always carries the most weight: shipping is necessary but not
sufficient, and the marginal marks sit in reading how the work came to be.
Response is where standout work pulls ahead --- the whole cohort answers the
same provocation, so wit and judgement can be rewarded side by side. At the
final project process rises to half --- its account also has to make the case
for the stack and workflow you chose --- and the artefact and the response split
the rest evenly: a real system under real constraints, answering an open brief
with judgement. COMP8020 students also carry a critical research note in the
final project; see [the brief](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/assessments/final-project/) for how the 40
reweights.
The bands are **HD** 80--100, **D--Cr** 60--79, **P** 50--59, **N** below 50.
The marker places your work in a band against the criterion's descriptors ---
published below, so you can see why work lands where it does --- then picks a
mark within it. Your final course grade uses ANU's usual letter grades, which
separate D (70--79) from CR (60--69); the criterion bands group them because the
descriptors don't split usefully at that level, and the comment beside your mark
shows each criterion's letter on that finer scale. Markers cross-mark a sample
of submissions and calibrate to a shared standard before marks go out.
#### Band descriptors
All three assignments are marked against one shared set of descriptors,
criterion by criterion. The descriptor for the COMP8020 research note is on
[the final project's brief](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/assessments/final-project/).
**Legibility of process (/100)**
- **HD** --- corroborated and skilled: beyond checking out, the evidence shows
deliberate direction --- failures diagnosed and fixed at the harness level
rather than retried, judgement visible in what was thrown away --- and the
account justifies the calls: why one beat the obvious alternative, and how you
knew the result was right before accepting it.
- **D--Cr** --- corroborated and competent: the account checks out and shows a
real working process, but the directing is routine --- attempt, accept, repeat
--- or the evidence has thin spots.
- **P** --- process asserted rather than shown: claims uncited, or only weakly
supported by the evidence.
- **N** --- no real evidence of a directed process, or a commit history that
contradicts the account.
**Working deployed artefact (/100)**
- **HD** --- holds up under use it wasn't designed for: the keyboard, a resize
mid-interaction, a slow connection.
- **D--Cr** --- deployed, live, and does what the brief asks at both marking
viewports.
- **P** --- notable gaps: the core interaction is unreliable, or one viewport is
broken.
- **N** --- doesn't deploy, or doesn't work.
**Response to the brief (/100)**
- **HD** --- a pointed, surprising answer to the provocation, scoped with
judgement: one idea, carried all the way.
- **D--Cr** --- a well-scoped response with a real idea behind it; minor drift.
- **P** --- meets the brief only loosely; over- or under-scoped, or an answer
without a point of view.
- **N** --- off-brief.
### The gallery
When marks come back, each assignment gets a public gallery, in the same spirit
as the crits' [hall of fame](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/hof/): every submission, listed by prototype title
and live URL, with no added attribution. (If you'd rather your work weren't
listed, tell the convenor in a private Ed thread before marks are returned.)
The whole cohort answered the same provocation, so the gallery is the full
spread of answers to one question --- reading it is how you calibrate your own
sense of what good looks like. Those submissions are public from the deadline,
so building on them is permitted under the
[academic integrity rule](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/topics/ai-use-and-integrity/#academic-integrity), and
they seed pod riffs and later work.
The final project gets a live version of the same thing: a **capstone
showcase**, in person, on Wednesday 11 November 2026, 11am--3pm in the Birch
Building (#35), as part of the School of Cybernetics'
[Cybernetics Showcase](https://events.humanitix.com/cybernetics-showcase-111126)
(free, but register). It carries no marks: it's the course's closing look at
what the cohort built.
### Word counts
Word counts on written components are indicative guidance: **400--600 words**
for an assignment's `PROCESS.md` (**900--1100** for the final project's, which
also makes the case for the stack and workflow), **400--600 words** for the
final project's `README.md`, **150--300 words** per reflection entry, and
**600--800 words** for the COMP8020 research note. A weekly crit repo's
`PROCESS.md` runs to **150--300 words**, in proportion to one week of work; in
the final-project repo it is rewritten at each crit and grows towards its
900--1100. There is **no word-limit penalty**, but writing an appropriately
scoped, concise response is itself part of your response to the brief, so work
that badly overshoots can lose marks there.
Images don't count towards any of those lengths, and they're welcome wherever
one carries the point better than a sentence does --- a failing check beside its
fix, a before/after at the mobile viewport. Commit them to your repo and link
them with a **relative path**, which is what makes them render on GitHub, where
your markdown is actually read. An image is evidence: it sits alongside the
commit link it belongs to, and a screenshot of a transcript still leaves you
owing the curated prompts the brief asks for. Nothing checks that your images
render, so open your `PROCESS.md` on GitHub before you ship: that rendered page
is what your marker sees.
### Deadlines
Assessment due dates are listed on each brief, and they fall at **noon on a
Monday**. The midday slot is intentional: if something breaks at the last
minute, you have the rest of the working day to ask for help.
The submission timestamp is the last commit pushed to the main branch. There's a
15-minute grace period beyond the published deadline, so a noon deadline really
means 12:15pm. Don't cut it close.
### Late submission
There are no late submissions. Once the deadline (plus the grace period above)
passes, the submission is closed and a missed deadline scores zero. There's no
5%-a-day taper to lean on.
That's deliberately blunt, so it's balanced by the other half of the policy:
extensions are easy to get. Hand in on time, or arrange more time **before** the
deadline.
### Extensions
If something is going to stop you submitting on time, request a short one
through the ANU School of Computing extension app **before the deadline**. You
don't need to be on death's door; you just need to ask before the due date, and
short extensions are granted routinely.
For longer or unforeseen situations (illness, injury, unexpected caring duties),
the
[Extenuating Circumstances Application (ECA)](https://www.anu.edu.au/students/program-administration/assessments-exams/extenuating-circumstances-application)
is the formal route. ANU sets its outcomes, not the convenor: an altered due
date, an alternative assessment, or modified weighting (a missed component's
weight redistributed across the rest), never a direct mark bump. If you're not
sure which you need, ask early.
### Feedback and re-marks {#appeals}
Every assignment mark comes with written feedback from your marker, written to
be useful for the next assignment rather than to justify the number --- and
there is a next one, twice.
The final project is the exception, because there is no next one: its result
comes without written feedback. If you'd like feedback on it, ask on a private
Ed thread once results are published, and your marker will email it to you.
If you want more than the written feedback gives you, ask your tutor. They
marked your work and they're happy to talk it through, particularly if you bring
a specific question about it.
If you're unhappy with the mark itself, you can ask for an independent re-mark:
a different marker marks your submission from scratch, without seeing the
original mark or feedback. Their mark replaces the original, and in asking for
one you accept that outcome --- in the University's words, it "may be a higher
mark, the same mark, or a lower mark".
This is ANU's Stage 1, informal consideration, and re-marking your work, or
organising another person to re-mark it, is exactly what that stage empowers a
convenor to do. So its deadline is the University's rather than ours: ask on a
private Ed thread to the convenor **within 20 working days of the result being
published**. You'll have the re-mark back within 20 working days of asking.
If that doesn't resolve it, Stage 2 is a formal appeal to your Associate Dean;
the
[assessment appeals](https://www.anu.edu.au/students/program-administration/assessments-exams/assessment-appeals)
page sets out how. A Stage 2 appeal against a single assessment task is
considered as a component of the final grade, after that grade is published,
rather than settled mid-semester.
All marking in this course is done by people --- no AI grades your work --- and
it's blind-moderated across the teaching team.
## Where this model comes from
The same studio literature that shapes [the crit](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/topics/studio-crit-model/)
shapes the assignments; the additional reading behind this page is about
practice, transfer and standards:
- **K. A. Ericsson, R. Th. Krampe & C. Tesch-Römer (1993),
["The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance"](https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.100.3.363),
_Psychological Review_ 100(3).** The two static assignments and their retros
are a deliberate-practice loop: effortful attempt, specific feedback, another
attempt.
- **D. N. Perkins & G. Salomon (1992), "Transfer of Learning", in _International
Encyclopedia of Education_ (2nd ed.).** Skills don't move to new contexts for
free, so the final project is the course's transfer test.
- **J. Biggs (1996),
["Enhancing Teaching Through Constructive Alignment"](https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00138871),
_Higher Education_ 32(3).** What's assessed is what's learned, so the criteria
are the learning outcomes restated.
- **D. R. Sadler (1989),
["Formative Assessment and the Design of Instructional Systems"](https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00117714),
_Instructional Science_ 18(2).** Students need to internalise the teacher's
concept of quality --- hence published bands, plus the gallery and the crits,
where the standard is embodied in real work.
Source: \
Licence: [CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)\
Cite as: Swift, B. (2026). _COMP4020/COMP8020 Agentic Coding Studio_ [Course materials]. ANU School of Computing. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21395760