This class has many different parts. While the Workbooks are the main thing, we will have Quizzes, Class-time Activities, Video Surveys, End-of-Week Surveys, and Checkpoints. This page tries to explain them all, how we will assess them, and how we will put them together to form final grades.

Overview of Grading

While students will ultimately be given a grade on the A-F scale, we will not use that for any of the components of the class (except the exam). We will not average grades.

Each part of class has a simple, coarse scheme for scoring work. It is described below. For the rationale behind this scheme see FAQ - The Whys? (Why not a traditional grading scheme?)

Do not look at the numerical scores Canvas gives you or try to compute averages.

Final grades will be based on the achievement and completion levels for each of the components of class. It is primarily based on the grade from the 7 workbooks, but will be adjusted by other factors.

• Final exam
• Bi-Weekly quizzes (6 - there is no quiz for the last module)
• Week-end content surveys (7 - every other Friday)
• Completion of “enough” of the other class components (surveys and checkpoints).

See Computing Final Grades below.

A Warning About Canvas

The grading scales in class (including the final A-F) are ordinal (not numeric) scales. We aren’t using numbers. You can’t average them.

Canvas doesn’t like this. It wants everything to be simple percentages that it can average.

We are stuck with Canvas, which means Canvas will tell you some numbers and try to average them in meaningless ways. Don’t listen to it.

We will find other ways to get grading information back to you.

Due Dates and Late Policies

In-class assignments (Wednesday quizzes and activities) are due at the end of class (9:40am, although we will usually give a “grace period” until 10am).

The final exam can only be taken in the final exam window.

All other due dates and cutoffs are given on a specific day. Days end at the end of the day (midnight). 12:01am Wednesday is not Tuesday. Note: Canvas is not consistent in how it treats the time between 11:59pm and 12:01am. To be safe, submit things before 11:59pm.

Every part of class has a due date but allows for late submissions. Every part of class has a cutoff as well. We do not accept submissions after the cutoff.

The late “penalties” are distinct grades that we will consider when figuring out final grades.

Some Grading Process

We do not have the resources to grade all parts of all assignments.

We will spot check assignments. We will assume that students turning in assignments have completed them acceptably. We may check some things - if we find that students didn’t complete these spot checks, we will assume there are other problems and reduce the grade.

This also means that we won’t necessarily see all great answers (especially on surveys). If we spot one, the grader might score it as “notable.” This doesn’t affect your grade directly, but if you end up at a boundary case in final grading, we might consider it.

The Parts of Class… And How We Grade Them

Workbooks

Workbooks are the main work in class. They are small websites with pages that have explanations (they serve as the textbook), examples and demonstrations, links to the videos, as well as having “form” assignments (where students fill in forms) and “box” assignments (where students write or edit programs).

Workbooks are delivered by GitHub classroom. At the beginning of each module, there will be an “Introduction Video” that is on a Video Survey. The Video Survey will have a GitHub classroom link.

Students turn in workbooks by (1) using the “checkpoint” and “submit” buttons embedded in the workbook (to upload form data); (2) committing and pushing their work to their repository on GitHub (for the boxes, but also as a copy of the form data). Students may also submit pictures or videos of “creative” assignments using separate Canvas forms.

Workbooks have rubrics that explain the main required work. Rubric elements are marked as “standard”, “advanced” or “creative”. Form elements do not have rubric checkboxes.

• Creative: Fills the “Advanced” requirements, and has sufficiently “creative” solutions for the “Creative” rubric items.
• Advanced: Fills the “Standard” requirements, and successfully completes most of the advanced rubric items.
• Standard: Successfully completes most of the standard rubric items and the form requirements.
• Late: Like standard, but not turned in before the deadline.
• Insufficient: An assignment was successfully submitted, but it does not complete enough rubric items or form requirements to be considered standard.
• Not submitted: Submission requires both parts (correct “submission” with the submit button, and a push to the repository)

Note: after the deadline, there is no way to receive Advanced or Creative levels (see FAQ - The Whys? (Why the hard deadlines and cutoffs?)). We really want students to move on to the next workbook.

Late assignments are accepted for 1 week after the deadline. (the cutoff is the following Monday)

Quizzes

Quizzes will happen on Wednesdays after the end of the module. The window to take the quiz “on time” will be the class period (extended slightly 8:30-10:00). There will also be the opportunity to re-take quizzes, or to take them late.

Quizzes will be designed to take 20 minutes (we might change this) - and you must complete the quiz within that amount of time. You can start any time during the window, as long as you finish before the end of the window.

We will release the answers (and explanations) for the quiz at the end of the window. (sometime between 10am and 11am)

We will also re-open the quiz so that students can take it late, or re-take it. Because the answers and explanations have been posted, we will treat these late quizzes differently.

If you took the quiz on time, we encourage you to check the answers. You can decide if your initial score is sufficient. If you feel like you didn’t do well enough, retake the quiz. Now that you’ve seen the answers/hints it should be easy. However, your new grade will be (at most) “Late Sufficient” (rather than whatever it was before)

The quiz grades will be the following levels. Canvas will report your “percent correct” and we will manually translate these to levels (that are stored separately). We will not assign grades right away.

• Exceptional
• Sufficient
• Late Sufficient
• Insufficient
• Late Insufficient
• Not Taken

The cutoff for late quizzes is the following Monday.

End of Week Surveys

Every week, there will be a “Canvas Graded Survey.” A graded survey is like a quiz, except that it isn’t “scored”. Canvas gives you points for completing it.

End-of-week surveys will be released on Fridays (usually before class), and are due the same day. You may turn them in late, with a cutoff of the following Thursday.

Because Canvas only does numbers, it will give you 5 points for doing an end-of-week survey. We will manually interpret it.

Odd weeks: Anonymous Surveys

In odd weeks (the weeks where new workbooks are introduced and with quizzes), the end-of-week survey will be anonymous. Anonymous means that we cannot connect answers back to students: we still know who completed the survey.

Because we have no way to connect students with their answers, grading is either:

• Completed on time
• Completed late
• Not Completed

The anonymous surveys are an important way for the course staff to figure out how the class is working. (see FAQ - The Whys? (Why do we have all of these surveys, checkpoints, and quizzes?)) They also provide a way for you to reflect on your learning.

Even weeks: Content Surveys

Content surveys are like quizzes. They will cover material in the workbooks. The questions might be a bit more open ended, rather than simple right/wrong.

Canvas will give you a “completed” grade automatically. We will assume you did well enough on the questions to deserve it. We might spot check your answers. If we find that they aren’t sufficient, we will change your grade to insufficient.

As with the quizzes, we will release solutions and explanations after the on-time deadline. If you turned things in on time, check your answers - if you think they might be insufficient, you can resubmit the quiz (but it will be marked as late).

The grades will be:

• Sufficient
• Sufficient Late
• Insufficient
• Insufficient Late
• Not turned in

Video Surveys

The required class videos will be presented on Canvas graded surveys. They are like quizzes, but Canvas will give you the points automatically (it assumes you’ve done a sufficient job). As with other surveys, we might check to see that you actually answered the questions, and will penalize you accordingly.

The due dates of the Video Surveys are set to keep you on track with the workbook timing. The introduction video for the module is due the first day of the module (since we want students to start that day). The survey contains the GitHub classroom link for the Workbook for that module.

There are no “late penalties” for video surveys: we may look at the timing of when students completed them if there’s a problem (if a student doesn’t do well on a workbook). There are also no cutoffs: the surveys (and the videos) remain available.

• Completed
• Late
• Not Completed

Checkpoints

Checkpoints are the way we make sure that students are making progress in the workbooks. They happen “automatically” while students are completing the workbooks. We recommend that students submit checkpoints (pressing the checkpoint button) and commit/push their work to GitHub periodically.

For Checkpoints, we will look to see if a checkpoint submission and a push have been made by the due date.

There are no explicit penalties for missing a checkpoint deadline. The penalty is that if a student falls behind, they will have a hard time completing the workbook. We might send them a reminder. If a student is having problems completing workbooks on time, we may look to see what their progress was over the course of the module.

Wednesday Activities

For the non-quiz Wednesdays, we will have a “class activity”. This will be a small assignment given out at class time (an announcement will be made on Canvas at 8:30), that we expect students to complete by the end of class time (10am). We will allow late submissions.

The activities may take different versions:

• GitHub Classroom - you will receive the assignment as a GitHub classroom link, and submit your result by commit/push back to your repository.
• Canvas Survey - this will work like any other survey

We will note assignments that are late. We will release example solutions after class time, so late submissions will be considered differently than on-time ones.

• Sufficient
• Sufficient Late
• Insufficient
• Insufficient Late
• Not turned in

Computing Final Grades

We will determine a final grade by considering the workbook scores. We will then check this with all other parts of class to make sure that it is consistent. If the other parts of class don’t match the expectations for the grade level (in either a good or bad way), we will decide what to do on a case-by-case basis.

Note that these levels are maximums - we might reduce them if our expectations are too high (see FAQ - The Whys? (Is this class curved?))

• A: Most creative, almost all advanced, at most one late. (nothing worse than late).
• AB: Some creative, most advanced, at most two late. (nothing worse than late)
• B: Almost all standard, at most one insufficient (nothing worse).
• BC: At most one insufficient (nothing worse).
• C: At most two insufficient, at most one not turned in.
• D: At most three insufficient (or worse).
• F: Three or more insufficient (or worse).

With that grade as a starting point, we will then use the grades in other parts of class as a check and adjust the results after considering everything.

Rough expectation levels:

• A
  • Quizzes & Content Surveys: Almost all at least late sufficient; most better than that
  • Anonymous Surveys, Video Surveys, Wednesday Activities, Checkpoints: Almost all at least late; most better than that.
• AB
  • Quizzes & Content Surveys: Almost all at least late sufficient
  • Anonymous Surveys, Video Surveys, Wednesday Activities, Checkpoints: Almost all at least late
• B
  • Quizzes & Content Surveys: most at least late sufficient
  • Anonymous Surveys, Video Surveys, Wednesday Activities, Checkpoints: Almost all at least late
• BC
  • Quizzes & Content Surveys: most at least late sufficient
  • Anonymous Surveys, Video Surveys, Wednesday Activities, Checkpoints: Almost all at least late
• C
  • Quizzes & Content Surveys: some at least late sufficient
  • Anonymous Surveys, Video Surveys, Wednesday Activities, Checkpoints: Most at least late
• D & F
  • Quizzes & Content Surveys: Most insufficient or worse
  • Anonymous Surveys, Video Surveys, Wednesday Activities, Checkpoints: Most late or worse