Grading (and late policy)

in Policies for CS559H

We will determine your grade by considering your engagement (did you complete the appropriate work) and excellence (did you demonstrate your mastery of the material). Engagement includes class attendance, completing assignments in a timely manner, and being active in class collaboration. Excellence involves the quality of your “portfolios” (the projects you will do).

This is assessment (measuring what you know at the end), rather than feedback (helping you understand your strengths and weaknesses so you can learn better). This page refers to the various types of class activities, discussed at Types of Assignments and Classes.

There are two “factors” in your final grade - you must do both. Excellent gives you a letter grade. Failure to do “well enough” at engagement results in a deduction from that letter grade.

  1. Engagement - (note that I am using the term “engagement” rather than “participation”) Did you do the work of the class? I believe that if you do the work of the class you will learn something.
  2. Excellence - Did you demonstrate mastery of the material? Did you create excellent projects that show off what you’ve learned, and show your fluency with the material by doing well in summative exams?

My grading philosophy: the class is graded against my “expectations” (how well I think students should do). If everyone gets an A, I have good students (this has happened). If no one gets an A, then I have incorrect expectations and need to adjust them.

Note: Canvas cannot tell you your grade. If you think it is trying to, ignore it.

Engagement

I expect that because you have “opted in”, you intend to be engaged. I expect everyone to get “100%” in this category (the scare quotes because 100% doesn’t mean perfect, it just means “meets the high standards”). The parts of engagement:

  1. You do all the online activities (surveys, pre-class exercises, turning in workbook drafts, etc.). Note that this is connected to in-class things… doing the “per-class reading survey” on time (before class) shows me that you were prepared for class - even if you don’t talk much in class.
  2. You are engaged in class. This means that you show up (physically, and in terms of attention) and “participate”. Participate doesn’t necessarily mean “talk a lot in class” - it means contributing to the collaborative learning process.
  3. You are engaged in collaboration. This means that you contribute to online discussions, and do the partner/group activities.

For the quantitative aspects of this (attendance, doing pre-class online exercises, etc.) we will keep score. In general, we expect that everyone will miss some things (you’ll miss 1 or 2 classes, you’ll mis 1 or 2 pre-class prep exercises, …). The notion of missing “too much” is subjective. I hesitate to say “drop 2” because sometimes missing more is OK, and sometimes missing 2 important things is not OK.

Importantly, you cannot make up (or redo, or turn in late) an engagement exercise. If you miss class, you missed the experience of that class. If you fail to turn in the pre-class reading survey, we don’t know that you prepared for class and we can’t use the results of the survey to shape the discussion. Turning in a “pre-class” exercise late is an oxymoron - if you turn it in late, it stops being “pre-class”. If you fail to turn in a draft of a workbook, you won’t be able to work on it in an in-class workshop.

The late policy for engagement activities is admittedly severe. However, the design of the class requires us to keep things in lock step - the collaborative learning experience means that one student not being prepared hurts others.

Aspects of engagement include:

  • Class attendance
  • Completion of the “content surveys” (which will be online Canvas surveys)
  • Submission of Workbook Drafts (pushing your work to GitHub so we can work on it collaboratively in class)
  • Class “participation” (subjective check of are you really active in the learning enviornment)
  • Participation in online discussions and brainstorming
  • Participation in the class community (asking/answering questions on Piazza, etc.)
  • Completing other class surveys.

Engagement activities (e.g., Content Surveys and Workbook drafts) are scored on a 2pt scale: satisfactory (or better) 2pts, not-satisfactory (but turned in) 1pt, not turned in 0pts.

For online surveys, Canvas will automatically give you 2pts for completing the survey before the cutoff. The course staff may check your answers, and penalize you if they are unacceptable.

At the end of the semester, we will determine a “grade” by looking at how consistently you were engaged. If you miss one or more aspects (e.g., you miss too many classes or fail to turn in too many surveys), we will deduct from your final grade.

Excellence

This is where you get to demonstrate that you’ve learned things. Preferably by doing cool stuff. We will have open ended assignments where students can use their creativity to make use of the knowledge they have gained. We’ll do this in a collaborative environment where we all (course staff, students, and AI assistants) help each other come up with interesting ideas and support each other in implementing them.

Part of the “excellence” piece is the exams. Honors students will need to take the exams from the regular class to show that they have learned the core material. Your grade won’t transfer exactly (we may adjust because honors students have a disadvantage because the timing of the class won’t work out).

It is my expectation that all honors students will be able to meet/exceed the expectations for an A because we will take time for feedback and iteration so that everyone can make something awesome.

Excellence activities (e.g., Portfolios and Exams) will be given letter grades.