Grading Scheme

Grade components:

class participation	5 %
classroom exercises	5 %
homeworks	25 %
two quizzes (short exams)	10 %
two midterm exams	20 %
final exam	15 %
term project	20 %

Class Participation:

Students are expected to contribute to learning by asking questions and making relevant comments in class and on the class newsgroup. Quality is more important than quantity. Disruptive activity contributes negatively. Please make sure all disruptive devices are disabled while in class. If you have a good reason for wanting to be disturbed in class, please contact me to make the appropriate arrangements.

Classroom Exercises:

Our work in the classroom will include a number of short group exercises, meant to solidify understanding of the concepts being discussed. One or more such exercises are likely to be part of most class meetings. The exercises will be graded for correctness as well as effort and group work. Since attendance is not mandatory (see policies below), a significant number of low-scoring exercises will be dropped for each student. Please see me if you have concerns about the interaction of this component and the attendance policy.

Homeworks:

Homeworks include programming and non-programming ones, often mixed. No collaboration is permitted. You are encouraged to discuss the problems and solution strategies at a high level, but the final solution and details must be your individual work. If you are unclear on the boundary between permissible and non-permissible interactions in this regard, please ask me.

Exams and Quizzes:

All exams and quizzes are open book, open notes. You are free to bring with you any resources that you find useful. However, no communications are permitted other than between students and me. The use of computers during exams is strongly discouraged, but brief use is permitted provided it does not cause a disturbance. You may use the Internet, but only as a library to look up material you may find useful. As above, check with me if you are unclear on what is permitted. The exams are designed to require no equipment other than a pen and paper, along with the textbook and assigned readings.

Midterm exams will be held during regular class meetings, and will be roughly an hour long. Each quiz is a short exam, roughly half an hour long, held during part of a class meeting. The final exam follows the usual university schedule, and is thus held outside of regular class meetings.

Project:

In addition to the programming and other homeworks, the course features a semester-long group project. Students will work in groups of three or more to design and implement a substantial database application. Projects will be graded based on a written project report, the submitted source code, a demonstration, and a question-and-answer session following the demo. These materials will be due the week before finals week, but may be submitted earlier—there is no penalty for early submissions. Further details will follow.

COS 580:

There will be additional readings assigned to COS 580 students. The readings will be a mix of some classic papers of the database field and more recent publications. COS 580 students are expected to be comfortable reading such papers. There will also be additional and/or different questions on the exams and homeworks. Similarly, COS 580 students will be held to a higher standard during the question-and-answer session following the project demo.

© 2009 Sudarshan S. Chawathe