Teaching Portfolio CS-1P Programming - Glasgow University - Quintin Cutts

Home
--- Introduction
--- Content Summary
--- Acknowledgements

Context
--- Teaching Philosophy
--- Institutional Context

Course Structure
--- Aims, Objectives, Content
--- Delivery Methods
--- Assessment

Reflection
--- Commenting on Content
--- Use of Voting Handsets
--- Laboratory Examination
--- Written Examination
--- Continuous Assessment
--- Overcoming Blocks

Outcomes
--- New course rationale
--- Personal learning

Assessment

This excerpt from the lecture guides pack for students summarises the assessment model and criteria for completing the course.


CS1P is a 20-credit module that runs throughout the year to May. The degree examination is held in May/June (with a resit in August). In addition, there is a class test in January (week 13-14) and two laboratory exams, held during the supervised lab sessions, in weeks 12 and 26. As described above, the Assignments pack contains a series of assignments to be submitted electronically during the year.

To obtain the credits for CS1P you must

  • Obtain at least a grade G in the degree examination
  • Obtain an average of at least a grade G in the laboratory examinations
  • Obtain a 'tick' for at least 8 of the 10 study packs. To obtain a tick, you must (a) attend the lab session, and (b) submit a serious attempt at the assignment. Note: nearly all successful students do in fact submit all 10.

Adjustments will be made if, for medical or other valid reasons, you miss a lab examination or some of the laboratory sessions.

Your overall grade for the course will be determined as follows:

  • A 70% contribution from the degree examination;
  • A 20% contribution from the two laboratory examinations;
  • A 10% contribution from the class test.

There are a number of comments to be made about this format.

Students are not being continuously summatively assessed on this course. This was a clear decision some years back to (a) reduce pressure on students during the formative phase of their learning, and (b) remove the need for us to seriously check for plagiarism. It depends on a certain level of responsbility from the students, and the 'tick' system described above aims to be just a little carrot to ensure that students are attending and completing some work. The carrot is, note, set at a very low level - although the wording is "submit a serious attempt at the assignment" in order to get the tick, in practice, it is hard to define this accurately and university rules have virtually required us to make this tick a simple measure of attendance.

The laboratory examinations, described in more length in the following section, are seen exams. The students have an opportunity to prepare their solutions ahead of time, but may not bring anything into the lab when they sit the exam. The exam is we hope not a test of memory skills, because we believe the size of problem is too large for memorisation - rather we are testing coding and debugging skills.

Problem solving skills are largely assessed in the written exams - the class test and degree exams.