Assignment Policies
This page is about assignment policies. There’s another whole section devoted to the actual assignments and the logistics of submitting them and getting feedback.
Unfortunately, there is a lot to know about assignments!
Purpose
Assignments are where the rubber hits the road. They provide opportunities to deepen your learning by applying the concepts discussed in lecture. The point is not to earn marks by any means possible; marks are a consequence of the understanding gained through practice.
Overview
In CS135 there are (approximately) weekly assignments. See the Assessment page to see how much they are worth.
Assignments are created by the instructors and are marked by the graduate teaching assistants based on specifications drawn up by the instructors. The midterms and final are created by the instructors and marked by instructors, ISAs, IAs, and TAs.
Assignment submission, evaluation, and return is a paperless process. Students will submit their assignments using MarkUs . Parts of the assignment will be graded by computer; parts will be marked by humans. When all assignments have been marked they will be available for viewing within MarkUs.
Assignment Submission
You may submit your solutions using MarkUs as often as you wish.
- Submitting a partially completed solution is a good idea, just in case you don’t get back to before the due date and to serve as a backup in case your computer breaks or is stolen.
- We mark the most recent submission, not your best submission.
We do not accept assignments except through MarkUs. Do not email your assignment to us. Do not send it via Microsoft Teams (or everybody in the class might get a copy!).
If the servers go down, we will make a fair accomodation, communicated via Piazza. The exact accomodations will depend on the nature of the outage and how badly it affected people.
Due Dates and Late Policy
Assignments are due at the date and time specified on the assignment itself and the Assignments page . All dates and times refer to the time in Waterloo. Assuming your computer’s date/time is set correctly for your locale, Waterloo’s date and time are displayed in the upper left corner of the course website.
If you are Unable to submit…
| Reason | To Do/Consequence |
|---|---|
| illness | see the Illness (https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs135/assess/illness_absence ) page. |
| self-declared 48-hour absence on Quest | also submit to MarkUs an empty file named use48hourAbsence.rkt before or just after the original deadline to alert us. You will then have 48 hours from the original due date and time to submit your assignment (for example, an assignment due at 9:00PM on Tuesday is due 48 hours later at 9:00PM Thursday). There is no late penalty period
after the 48-hour extension; anything submitted after the 48-hour extension can be marked for feedback only. |
| life events outside your control (e.g. death of a family member, serious auto accident) | Email ISC: Karen Anderson (mailto:kaanders@uwaterloo.ca) to see what concessions can be made and what documentation might be needed. |
| technical problems | you’re probably out of luck unless (maybe) you can document the issue (which is typically hard to impossible) or you can submit within the penalty period (penalty will be applied). If you can document the issue, email ISC: Karen Anderson (mailto:kaanders@uwaterloo.ca). |
| didn’t submit early enough to have time to correct basic test errors | you’re out of luck unless you can submit within the penalty period. See Responsibility to Check Basic Tests |
| life was just too busy | you’re out of luck unless you can submit within the penalty period (penalty will be applied). Life is like that sometimes. |
No matter why you were unable to submit on time or within the penalty or 48-hourt self-declaration period, we recommend the following:
- Do the assignment as soon as possible. What you want to get out of the assignments is the practice, learning, knowledge and understanding that will prepare you for next assignments and the exams (which includes practice so you are better able to answer exam questions in a timely manner).
- Submit it to MarkUs. MarkUs will complain after the deadline but still accept it.
- Email the ISAs (mailto:cs135@uwaterloo.ca) and ask them to “mark it for feedback”. You won’t get marks but you will get feedback that may be valuable on future assignments and exams.
Late Penalty Period
- Marks associated with a specific Racket file that is submitted after the deadline but before midnight that same day will have approximately 10% deducted automatically from the marks earned for that file.
- A file submitted between midnight and 8:00AM the next morning after a deadline will have approximately 20% deducted automatically from the mark. .
- Files submitted later than 8:00AM the next morning after a deadline will not receive marks but can be marked for feedback by request to cs135@uwaterloo.ca .
Responsibility to Check Basic Tests
We provide basic tests for each submission to assure you that your assignment was accepted and is markable by our software. It protects you from mistakes such as submitting the wrong file, a file with a syntax error, misnamed or missing functions, etc. It’s amazing how many fatal errors can appear during last-minute tidying up!
It is your responsibility to check the basic tests, especially on your last submission, to make sure everything went right. We will not be sympathetic to issues that could have been detected by you by simply reading the basic tests and re-submitting (don’t leave submission to the last minute; also, because everyone submitting at once close to the deadline can slow down system response time).
Assignment 0 is Mandatory
You must receive full marks for Assignment 0 before the due date for Assignment X to receive any marks for Assignment X.
A00 can be submitted any time but you obviously want to submit it before your next assignment is due. If you procrastinate long enough, this rule can easily cause you to fail the course.
Returning Assignments and Feedback
When your assignment has been marked, you can view your grade and feedback on the course website under Assessment > View Marksheets. Here, you will find a list of all available marksheets to you which will include your overall assignment grade, the grade breakdown, as well as any annotations that the grader has left for you to read.
Make sure you review this marksheet and understand any feedback given for future assignments. If you believe that your assessment has been marked incorrectly, you may submit a regrade request on the course website under Assessment > Remark Requests.
Remark Requests
It is our goal to assess your work fairly, but sometimes we mess up and mark your work incorrectly. If this happens you may submit a re-mark request .