Programming 2

Here you will find

• the rules for exam admission
• the rules for passing this course
• various other useful information about the course

The module will feature practical programming projects and an exam to measure individual performance. There will be the possibility of retaking the exam. Both exams are in August, the exact dates can be found in the timetable of the dCMS. Formally, the practical projects are examination preconditions („Prüfungsvorleistung“), in contrast to the exam and its retake („Prüfungsleistung“). Another examination precondition („Prüfungsvorleistung“) you will be facing takes the form of minitests. Details are explained below.

dCMS

The course management system dCMS is our and your portal for providing and retrieving all important information.

Exercise Sheets

Exercise sheets will be made available online as PDF files on a weekly basis, usually on Wednesdays. We plan to publish a total of 14 exercise sheets in the dCMS. Printed versions of the sheets will not be provided. Unless otherwise announced, the exercise sheets always refer to the material of the last two lectures preceding their release date.

Tutorials

Tutorials are weekly gatherings in which the learning objectives of the module are discussed and deepened in smaller groups, on the basis of the exercise sheets and under the guidance of one of our tutors. Tutorial participation is not enforced (as a matter of principle), but highly recommended (as a matter of fact). Tutorials are scheduled weekly on Wednesdays at different time slots throughout the day. 

Minitests

At the start of roughly every second tutorial time slot, we will schedule a minitest of approximately 15 minutes duration for the purpose of measuring your competence with respect to the learning objectives currently in focus. We plan to have 6 minitests in total, each relating to the material of the weeks since the previous minitest. We will start with the first minitest on Wednesday of the fourth week of lecturing. In each of the minitests, a maximum of 15 points can typically be achieved.

For each minitest, you must be in the room assigned to you on your personal status page well in advance of the start of the test. The minitests will ensure that (we and) you are constantly kept up to date regarding your level of competence in the subject matter. They also are one of the elements in exam admission, see below.

If you wish to not attend the full duration of the tutorial, but only plan on showing up to write the minitest only, you can indicate so in your tutorial preferences on your Personal Status page. Based on clear statistical evidence harvested from past editions of this and other lectures, we recommend you do not opt for that, but you are entirely free to ignore this advice.

Office Hours

Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays will feature office hours. Office hours provide opportunities for consulting with tutors regarding your individual questions as well as for working together with your fellow students. The exact times and rooms can be found in the timetable.

Forum

The Forum – accessible via the link in the menu above – is the place to interact and discuss with other students, tutors, assistants, and lecturers online.

Communication with the Team

The Forum is the default online way to communicate with your peers and the Prog-2 team regarding both technical and non-technical concerns, and as such replaces email communication. It has built-in means to communicate with your tutors, asistants and lecturers of the module. We expect you to address them in this order, after you have checked the forum for discussions that ovelap with your concern, and only if privacy is at stake. Otherwise we gladly see your post in the forum. 

Exams

There will be a final exam which is expected to take 180 minutes. It can be retaken if needed, so there are effectively two exams, both scheduled in August. Passing the course requires passing the exam or the retake exam.

Projects

Throughout the semester, there will be six practical programming projects in which you are tasked to implement software systems of increasing complexity. The projects are numbered 1 through 6. Their increase in solution difficulty is echoed by the number of weeks given for solving them, as well as by the points achievable per project.

Before attempting to solve the first projects, be sure to install the software as described in our Software installation guide. 

Admission to the Final Exam

The six minitests constitute an important assesment check regarding exam admission. For each participant, we will drop the minitest with the lowest point score. The points of the remaining five minitests will be added up. To be admitted to the final exam (and its retake), you must have scored at least 50% of the points achievable in those five minitests.

Moreover, accumulating a point score of at least 30% of the total achievable points in all but the last programming project is a neccessary condition for exam admittance. Lastly, you need to score non-zero points in at least four out of the six programming projects to be admitted to the exam (and retake exam).

In summary, to be admitted to the exam, you must

• score at least 50% of the achievable point total in your five best minitests;
• score more than zero points in at least four project submissions;
• accumulate at least 30% of the achievable point total in the first five projects.

Passing the Module and Grading

You pass the module if you pass the exam or the retake exam. Your final grade will be determined on the basis of the results obtained in the final exam (or final retake exam, whichever is better), and the points achieved in the projects. The exam points contributes 60%, the project points 40% to your grade.

Illness or Latecoming

The fact that we are allowing each student to drop one of the six minitests (which includes the option of not to participating in one of them) is an implicit (and the only) compensation for individual cases of sickness or situations where the student cannot participate in some week, or similar.