Grading#
This section of the syllabus describes the principles and mechanics of the grading for the course. The course is designed around your learning so the grading is based on you demonstrating how much you have learned.
Additionally, since we will be studying programming tools, we will use them to administer the course. To give you a chance to get used to the tools there will be a grade free zone for the first few weeks.
Learning Outcomes#
The goal is for you to learn and the grading is designed to as close as possible actually align to how much you have learned. So, the first thing to keep in mind, always is the course learning outcomes:
By the end of the semester, students will be able to:
Apply common design patterns and abstractions to understand new code bases, tools, and components of systems.
Differentiate the different classes of tools used in computer science in terms of their features, roles, and how they interact and justify positions and preferences among popular tools
Identify the computational pipeline from hardware to high level programming language
Discuss implications of choices across levels of abstraction
Describe the context under which essential components of computing systems were developed and explain the impact of that context on the systems.
These are what I will be looking for evidence of to say that you met those or not.
Principles of Grading#
Learning happens through practice and feedback. My goal as a teacher is for you to learn. The grading in this course is designed to reflect how deeply you learn the material, even if it takes you multiple attempts to truly understand a topic. The topics in this course are all topics that will come back in later courses, so it is important that you understand each of them correctly so that it helps in the next course.
This course is designed to encourage you to work steadily at learning the material and demonstrating your new knowledge. There are no single points of failure, where you lose points that cannot be recovered. Also, you cannot cram anything one time and then forget it. The material will build and you have to demonstrate that you retained material. You will be required to demonstrate understanding of the connections between ides from different parts of the course.
Earning a C in this class means you have a general understanding; you will know what all the terms mean; you could follow along in a meeting where others were discussing systems concepts and use core tools for common tasks. You know where to start when looking things up.
Earning a B means that you can apply the course concepts in other programming environments; you can solve basic common errors without looking much up.
Earning an A means that you can use knowledge from this course to debug tricky scenarios; you can know where to start and can form good hypotheses about why uncommon errors have occurred; you can confidently figure out new complex systems.
The course is designed for you to succeed at a level of your choice. As you accumulate knowledge, the grading in this course is designed to be cumulative instead of based on deducting points and averaging. No matter what level of work you choose to engage in, you will be expected to revise work until it is correct. The material in this course will all come back in other 300 and 400 level CSC courses, so it is essential that you do not leave this course with misconceptions, as they will make it harder for you to learn related material later.
If you made an error in an assignment what do you need to do?
Read the suggestions and revise the work until it is correct.
Penalty-free Zone#
Since learning developer tools is a core learning outcome of the course, we will also use them for all aspects of administering the course. This will help you learn these tools really well and create accountability for getting enough practice with core operations, but it also creates a high stakes situation: even submitting your work requires you understanding the tools. This would not be very fair at the beginning of the semester.
For the first three weeks we will have a low stakes penalty-free zone where we will provide extra help and reminders for how to get feedback on your work. In this period, deadlines are more flexible as well. If work is submitted incorrectly, we will still see it because we will manually go look for all activities. After this zone, we will assume you chose to skip something if we do not see it.
What happens if you merged a PR without feedback?
During the Penalty-Free zone, it will still be graded and logged. After that, we will not see it.
Important
If there are terms in the rest of this section that do not make sense while we are in the penalty-free zone, do not panic. This zone exists to help you get familiar with the terms needed.
During the third week, you will create a course plan where you establish your goals for the course and I make sure that you all understand the requirements to complete your goals.
What happens if you’re confused by the grading scheme right now?
Nothing to worry about, we will review it again in week three after you get a chance to build the right habits and learn vocabulary. We will also give you an activity that helps us to be sure that you understand it at that time.
Learning Badges#
Your grade will be based on you choosing to work with the material at different levels and participating in the class community in different ways. Each of these represents different types of badges that you can earn as you accumulate evidence of your learning and engagment.
experience: guided in class acitivies
review: just the basics
practice: a little bit more indepdendent
explore: posing your own directions of inquiry
build: in depth- application
To earn a D you must complete:
23 experience badges
To earn a C you must complete:
23 experience badges
18 review badges
To earn a B you must complete:
23 experience badges
your choice:
18 practice badges
12 review + 12 practice
For an A you must complete:
23 experience badges
your choice:
18 practice badges + 6 explore badges
18 review badges + 3 build badges
6 review badges + 12 practice badges + 4 explore badges + 1 build badges
12 review badges + 6 practice badges+ 2 explore badges + 2 build badges
You can also mix and match to get +/-. For example (all examples assume 23 experience badges)
A-: 18 practice + 4 explore
B+: 6 review + 12 practice + 4 explore
B-: 6 review + 12 practice
B+: 24 practice
C+: 12 review + 6 practice
Warning
These counts assume that the semester goes as planned and that there are 26 available badges of each base type (experience, review, practice). If the number of available badges decreases by more than 2 for any reason (eg snowdays, instructor illness, etc) the threshold for experience badges will be decreased.
Important
There will be 20 review and practice badges available after the penalty free zone. This means that missing the review and practice badges in the penalty free zone cannot hurt you. However, it does not mean it is a good idea to not attempt them, not attempting them at all will make future badges harder, because reviewing early ideas are important for later ideas.
You cannot earn both practice and review badges for the same class session, but most practice badge requirements will include the review requirements plus some extra steps.
At the end of the semester, there will be special integrative badge opportunities that have multipliers attached to them. These badges will count for more than one. For example an integrative 2x review badge counts as two review badges. These badges will be more complex than regular badges and therefore count more.
Can you do any combination of badges?
No, you cannot earn practice and review for the same date.
Experience Badges#
You earn an experience badge in class by:
preparing for class
following along with the activity (creating files, using git, etc)
responding to 80% of inclass questions (even incorrect or :idk:)
reflecting on what you learned
asking a question at the end of class
You can make up an experience badge by:
preparing for class
reading the posted notes
completing the activity from the notes
producing an “experience report” OR attending office hours
An experience report is evidence you have completed the activity and reflection questions. The exact form will vary per class, if you are unsure, reach out ASAP to get instructions. These are evaluated only for completeness/ good faith effort. Revisions will generally not be required, but clarification and additional activity steps may be adcised if your evidence suggests you may have missed a step.
Do you earn badges for prepare for class?
No, prepare for class tasks are folded into your experience badges.
What do you do when you miss class?
Read the notes, follow along, and produce and experience report or attend office hours.
What if I have no questions?
Learning to ask questions is important. Your questions can be clarifying (eg because you misunderstood something) or show that you understand what we covered well enough to think of hypothetical scenarios or options or what might come next. Basically, focused curiosity.
Review and Practice Badges#
The tasks for these badges will be defined at the bottom of the notes for each class session and aggregated to badge-type specific pages on the left hand side.
You can earn review and practice badges by:
Create an issue for the badge you plan to work on/Focus on a practice or prepare badge you plan to work on
Completing the tasks
Create a new branch for the badge through the main page of your KWL repository
Add the new file from the badge instructions to the new branch, and within that file have its contents be a task within that badge (for example, answering questions, making notes, or output from running something)
After creating the file, a new button should appear for the option of creating a new pull request, which you should click and open
Then create the pull request. Make the title match the badge name
Assign/merge any more files you may need into this pull request
Link badge the issue, by clicking the settings icon on the “development” tab (right side)
To “submit,” request a review, by clicking the settings icon on the “reviewers” tab (right side)
Then you should keep revising the PR until it is approved
Then merge the PR after it is approved
How do I make a new branch on github?
Through the main (“”) page of your KWL repository, click the rectange on the top left of your screen that says “main”. You then type in the new unique branch name you wish to make. You then click below where it says “create branch”.
How do I Assign/merge files into another pull request
Go to the pull request you wish to move. In the upper right part of your screen there should be a button that says edit. You shoudl click that, then click the button that says ‘base: main”. You then type in the name of the new pull request’s branch you would like to move it to.
Where do you find assignments?
At the end of notes and on the separate pages in the activities section on the left hand side
You should create one PR per badge
The key difference between review and practice is the depth of the activity. Work submitted for review and practice badges will be assessed for correctness and completeness. Revisions will be common for these activities, because understanding correctly, without misconceptions, is important.
Important
Revisions are to help you improve your work and to get used to the process of making revisions. Even excellent work can be improved. The process of making revisions and taking good work to excellent or excellent to exceptional is a useful learning outcome. It will help you later to be really good at working through PR revisions; we will use the same process as code reviews in industry, even though most of it will not be code alone.
Explore Badges#
Explore badges require you to pose a question of your own that extends the topic. For inspiration, see the practice tasks and the questions after class.
Details and more ideas are on the explore page.
You can earn an explore badge by:
creating an issue proposing your idea (consider this ~15 min of work or less)
adjusting your idea until given the proceed label
completing your exploration
submitting it as a PR
making any requested changes
merging the PR after approval
For these, ideas will almost always be approved, the proposal is to make sure you have the right scope (not too big or too small). Work submitted for explore badges will be assessed for depth beyond practice badges and correctness. Revisions will be more common on the first few as you get used to them, but typically decraese as you learn what to expect.
Important
Revisions are to help you improve your work and to get used to the process of making revisions. Even excellent work can be improved. The process of making revisions and taking good work to excellent or excellent to exceptional is a useful learning outcome. It will help you later to be really good at working through PR revisions; we will use the same process as code reviews in industry, even though most of it will not be code alone.
You should create one PR per badge
Build Badges#
Build badges are for when you have an idea of something you want to do. There are also some ideas on the build page.
You can earn a build badge by:
creating an issue proposing your idea and iterating until it is given the “proceed” label
providing updates on your progress
completing the build
submitting a summary report as a PR linked to your proposal issue
making any requested changes
merging the PR after approval
You should create one PR per badge
For builds, since they’re bigger, you will propose intermediate milestones. Advice for improving your work will be provided at the milestones and revisions of the compelte build are uncommon. If you do not submit work for intermediate review, you may need to revise the complete build. The build proposal will assessed for relevance to the course and depth. The work will be assessed for completeness in comparison to the propsal and correctness. The summary report will be assessed only for completeness, revisions will only be requested for skipped or incomplete sections.
Community Badges#
Community badges are awarded for extra community participation. Both programming and learning are most effective in good healthy collaboration. Since being a good member of our class community helps you learn (and helps others learn better), some collaboration is required in other badges. Some dimensions of community participation can only be done once, for example fixing a typo on the course website, so while it’s valuable, all students cannot contribute to the course community in the same way. To reward these unique contributions, you can earn a community badge.
You can see some ideas as they arise by issues labeled community.
Community badges can replace missed experience, review, and practice badges, upgrade a review to a practice badge, or they can be used as an alternate way to earn a + modifier on a D,C,or B (URI doesn’t award A+s, sorry). Community badges are smaller, so they are not 1:1 replacements for other badges. You can earn a maximum of 14 community badges, generally one per week. Extra helpful contributions may be awarded 2 community badges, but that does not increase your limit. When you earn them, you can plan how you will use it, but they will only be officially applied to your grade at the end of the semester. They will automatically be applied in the way that gives you the maximum benefit.
Community Badge values:
3 community = 1 experience badge
4 community = 1 review
7 community = 1 practice.
3 community badges + 1 review = 1 practice.
10 community = add a
+to a D,C, or B, note that this is more efficient.
You can earn community badges by:
fixing small issues on the course website (during only)
contributing extra terms or reviews to your team repo
sharing articles and discussing them in the course discussions
contributing annotated resources the course website
Note
Some participation in your group repo and a small number of discussions will be required for experience, review, and practice badges. This means that not every single contribution or peer review to your team repo will earn a community badge.
Example(nonexhaustive) uses:
22 experience + 17 review + 11 community = C (replace 2 experience, 1 review)
24 experience + 17 review + 5 community = C (replace 1 review)
24 experience + 18 review + 10 community = C+ (modifier)
24 experience + 18 practice + 10 community = B+ (modifier)
23 experience + 18 practice + 13 community = B+ (modifier, replace 1 experience)
24 experience + 16 practice + 2 review + 10 community = B (upgrade 2 review)
24 experience + 10 review + 10 community + 6 practice + 3 explore + 2 build = A (replace 2 review)
24 experience + 14 review + 10 community + 4 practice + 3 explore + 2 build = A (upgrade 2 review to practice)
24 experience + 12 review + 14 community + 4 practice + 3 build =A (replace 2 practice)
These show that community badges can save you work at the end of the semester by reducing the number of practice badges or simplifying badges
Free corrections#
All work must be correct and complete to earn credit. In general, this means that when your work is not correct, we will give you guiding questions and advice so that you can revise the work to be correct. Most of the time asking you questions is the best way to help you learn, but sometimes, especially for small things, showing you a correct example is the best way to help you learn.
Additionally, on rare occasions, a student can submit work that is incorrect or will have down-the-line consquences but does not demonstrate a misunderstanding. For example, in an experience badge, putting text below the # line instead of replacing the hint within the < >. Later, we will do things within the kwl repo that will rely on the title line being filled in, but it’s not a big revision where the student needs to rethink about what they submitted.
In these special occasions, good effort that is not technically correct may be rewarded with a . In this case, the instructor or TA will give a suggestion, with the emoji in the comment and leave a review as “comment” instead of “changes requested” or “approved”. If the student commits the suggestion to acknowledge that they read it, the instructor will then leave an approving review. Free corrections are only available when revisions are otherwise eligible. This means that they cannot extend a deadline and they are not available on the final grading that occurs after our scheduled “exam time”.
Important
These free corrections are used at the instructional team’s discretion and are not guaranteed.
This means that, for example, the same mistake the first time, might get a and a third or fourth time might be a regular revision where we ask you to go review prior assignments to figure out what you need to fix with a broad hint instead of the specific suggestion
IDEA
If the course response rate on the IDEA survey is about 75%, will be applicable to final grading. this includes the requirement of the student to reply
Deadlines#
There will be fixed feedback hours each week, if your work is submitted by the start of that time it will get feedback. If not, it will go to the next feedback hours.
We do not have a final exam, but URI assigns an exam time for every class. The date of that assigned exam will be the final due date for all work including all revisions.
Experience badges#
Prepare for class tasks must be done before class so that you are prepared. Missing a prepare task could require you to do an experience report to make up what you were not able to do in class.
If you miss class, the experience report should be at least attempted/drafted (though you may not get feedback/confirmation) before the next class that you attend. This is strict, not as punishment, but to ensure that you are able to participate in the next class that you attend. Skipping the experience report for a missed class, may result in needing to do an experience report for the next class you attend to make up what you were not able to complete due to the missing class activities.
If you miss multiple classes, create a catch-up plan to get back on track by contacting Dr. Brown.
Review and Practice Badges#
These badges have 5 stages:
posted: tasks are on the course website
planned: an issue is created
started: one task is attempted and a draft PR is open
completed: all tasks are attempted PR is ready for review, and a review is requested
earned: PR is approved (by instructor or a TA) and work is merged
Tip
these badges should be reviewed and started before the next class. This will set you up to make the most out of each class session. However, only prepare for class tasks have to be done immediately.
These badges badges must be started within one week of when the are posted and completed within two weeks. A task is attempted when you have answered the questions or submitted evidence of doing an activity or asked a sincere clarifying question.
If a badge is planned, but not started within one week it will become expired and ineligble to be earned. You may request extensions to complete a badge by updating the PR message, these will typically be granted. Extensions for starting badges will only be granted in exceptional circumstances.
Once you have a good-faith attempt at a complete badge, you have until the end of the semester to finish the revisions in order to earn the badge.
Tip
Try to complete revisions quickly, it will be easier for you
Explore Badges#
Explore badges have stages:
proposed: issue created
in progress: issue is labeled “proceed” by the instructor
complete: work is complete, PR created, review requested
revision: “request changes” review was given
earned: PR approved
Explore badges are feedback-limited. You will not get feedback on subsequent explore badge proposals until you earn the first one. Once you have one earned, then you can have up to two in progress and two in revision at any given time.
Build Badges#
You may earn at most one build badge per month, with final grading in May. To earn three build badges, you must earn the first one by the end of March.
Academic Honesty Violation Penalty#
If you are found to submit prismia responses that do not reflect your own thinking or that of discussion with peers as directed, the experience badge for that class session will be ineligible.
If you are found to submit work that is not your own for a review or prepare badge, the review and prepare badges for that date will be ineligible and the penalty free zone terms will no longer apply to the first six badges.
If you are found to submit work that is not your own for an explore or build badge, that badge will not be awarded and your maximum badges at the level possible will drop to 2/3 of the maximum possible.