CS 3110 Fall 2020 Prelim Instructions
Timing. The prelim will be available Saturday, October 3, 7:30 pm ET until Monday, October 5, 7:30 pm ET. Once you begin you will have a time limit of 24 hours (or less if you start after Sunday, October 4, 7:30 pm ET). So, you get to pick a 24 hour period of your choice within that longer 48 hour window. No one can download the exam before that 48 hour window, and no one can submit after it. CMS will log when you download the exam and when you submit. It will not stop you from submitting after 24 hours, but, I will be able to determine that from the log and enact appropriate penalties. So be careful to limit yourself to 24 hours.
Work-in-Progress Submission: You must upload your solution as a work- in-progress by about two hours after you download the exam. You may then continue working and resubmitting up to the 24-hour limit as you see fit. Your work-in-progress solution and its timestamp will not be graded, but they will serve as a record of your progress should any anomalous circumstances arise —such as academic integrity investigations or claims of last-minute technical difficulties. Failing to make a substantive work-in-progress submission would be viewed very unfavorably in such circumstances.
Emergencies: There will be no makeups nor extensions. If an emergency sit- uation arises, email me (Prof. Clarkson) directly. I will determine a remedy, which will most likely be to re-weight your semi-final grade, making it 20% in- stead of 12%. I might also choose to grade your work-in-progress submission, or to conduct an oral exam (a Zoom call in which you live code for me).
Questions During the Exam: If you have any questions, please make a pri- vate post on Campuswire. Do not direct-message any course staff. Because this is an exam, the course staff will not provide any hints, coding assistance, or additional explanation of the material covered by the exam. Consulting and office hours will continue to be held (because you might want to ask questions about A2), but course staff will not answer any questions about the exam dur- ing them.
Academic Integrity: The minimum penalty for cheating will be a score of −100% on the exam. So it’s better not to submit than to cheat. The 48 hour regret clause that we are using for assignments will also be honored on this
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prelim. The vast majority of you would never cheat. A few might no matter what. Then there’s the “tempted” area in between. If you find yourself being tempted, here’s what I ask: stop and write me an email about why you are on the verge of slipping.
Access to Materials: The prelim is open book. You may access anything linked from the current semester 3110 Canvas, including the textbook, videos, OCaml manual, and so forth. You may also access your own notes and study materials. Any other resources you consult must be of a general nature, not specifically about the content of an exam problem, and must be cited in your solution.
Collaboration: Your work is to be entirely your own. You may not collabo- rate with other humans. You may not work with other students. You may not make posts about the exam on sites like Stack Overflow or Chegg, nor utilize such posts made by others.
Backups: Keep frequent backups during the time that you are working, per- haps in Dropbox, on a backup hard drive, or in a private Github repo. Pre- vious submissions are downloadable from CMS, which means your work-in- progress submission (and any later submissions) will also serve as a backup.
Technical Difficulties: If you encounter technical difficulties with Ugclinux, work locally on your own machine. If you encounter technical difficulties on your local machine, recall that the VM is available and provides a complete, working development environment. The 24-hour period over which the exam is offered is sufficient to resolve technical issues if you are proactive. Procrasti- nation, on the other hand, could be quite problematic.
SDS Accommodations: SDS extra-time accommodations do automatically apply to the 2-hour time limit for the work-in-progress submission. SDS ac- commodations do not apply to the overall 24-hour limit.
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