CSCH 2341 Grading Scheme

Evaluation Category Weight
zyBook Assignments (Participation Activities, Challenge Activities, Labs)
These must be completed online, within the zyBook.
The percentage of total required points accumulated will count for this 25%.
For example, if 500 points are required and you accumulate 400,
you get 20% (4/5 of the possible total) in this category.
No extension will be given for any of these assignments. 		25%
Non-zyBook Assignments (Java Program Development)
Each one of these counts equally toward this 25% of your total grade.
No extension will be given for any of these assignments.
These assignments must be submitted in your uxx server account. 		25%
Hands-on activities in the Recitation/Lab sessions.
There will be no "make ups" for any of these exercises.
Any 30 of the available points give you full value for this category.
You must attend lab sessions and submit there to get those points. 		30%
Online Final Examination via Brightspace
Date: Wednesday, December 17, 2025
Time: 10am to 1pm (Atlantic Standard Time)
Note that the date and time of the final are determined by the SMU Registrar,
not by your instructor. Thus non-local students must be prepared to write the final exam at any hour, depending on the student's time zone.
 20%
Total 100%
Final letter grades for the course will be assigned according to the scheme outlined in the university calendar, and based on the numerical total calculated as outlined above. This total numerical grade will be the key factor, but not the only factor, in assigning a final letter grade for the course. A student may not do as well as expected, or even fail the course, unless it is clear that an honest effort has been made to complete all parts of the course. For example, ignoring the hands-on exercises portion of the grade, and/or ignoring the Submissions 01 to 05 portion of the grade will result in an automatic failure, irrespective of how well a student does on the other evaluation categories. Students should also be aware that the instructor may use his discretion to raise a student's grade if a review of the overall student's record shows an accumulation of more than the maximum number of possible points on the hands-on exercises and a strong attendance record in the online sessions as well as in the online lab sessions.

Important Notes on the Grading Scheme
(subject to fine tuning as the course progresses)

  1. This course will be delivered "synchronously". That means that all sessions will be "live", which in turn means that all students are expected to "attend" those sessions. However, all sessions will also be recorded, so if a session is missed for some reason, it may be viewed later, but this should be the exception rather than the rule.
  2. Since it is impossible to arrange for each required assignment to require the same amount of time and effort for completion by each student, it is important that each individual plan accordingly when scheduling work on an upcoming submission.
  3. Every zyBook and programming assignment has a submission deadline, and any assignment is regarded as "late" if it is submitted after its deadline. Marking and the recording of marks for a submission may be done at any time following the deadline for that submission. Deadlines are published and available well in advance of due dates, so do not ask for an extension of any deadline. It will not be granted. So your goal should be to start work on each assignment early, and aim to finish it in plenty of time. If you do not finish a zyBook PCLAss?? assignment by the deadline, you may continue to work on it for the learning experience, but any points accumulated after the deadline will not be transferred to Brightspace.

    At the end of term, if one or more assignments (zyBook or non-zyBook) have been missed, the instructor may (or may not, at his discretion) allow additional credit for one or more of those missed items. If at the end of the term your record contains homework gaps that you feel might significantly affect your overall grade once the final exam has been written, and you have completed some or all of the work that would fill in those gaps, you may wish to send the instructor an email containing an explanation for why there were gaps in the first place, along with any supporting evidence you might have, and some additional credit may or may not be given. Such allowance will be based on how well everything else has been done by you during the term, and this is also a place where your attendance record will be examined. If few live sessions have been attended (or even none, which has happened), further positive consideration is unlikely. In any case, this is how all sudden and not-so-sudden emergency-type events that might crop up during the term and cause one or more assignments to be missed, or late, will be dealt with. Such events might include anything from bad internet connections to chronic or sudden health problems, deaths in the family, favorite pets getting run over by cars, falling downstairs in the dark ... the possibilities are endless.

    And here is something else to keep in mind. In this virtual environment it is sometimes impossible to tell who is actually doing the work that is supposedly being done by a particular student. If the instructor suspects, for any reason, that a student has not been doing his or her own work during the course, no grade in the course will be assigned to that student until the instructor has had a one-on-one Zoom session (complete with audio and video) with the student in question, and the student has answered, to the satisfaction of the instructor, whatever questions about the course material are posed by the instructor during the session.

Important Notes on Brightspace Final Exam

Questions will generally be short ones of the multiple-choice, fill-in the blank, true/false, and possibly other, kinds, but will not require the writing of programs, classes or even methods ... you will have done lots of that during the term, and during an exam is not the time or place to be writing code. The following policy items, which are designed to help preserve the integrity of the final exam, will be in effect: