Grading Policy (tentative - may change with announcement)

• Attendance: Mandatory. Missing more than 10 hours will cause an FZ grade. In both days of the week lectures will count 2 hours (hence we will count 4 hours per week for attendance).
• Quizzes: 12%.
• Projects: 30%.
• Homeworks: 3%.
• Midterm: 25%. Closed book and notes.
• Final exam: 30%. Will cover all topics. Closed book and notes.

Important Information (please read carefully)

• You can find the academic integrity rules and policies for CS342 projects/homeworks at the following page.
• Every 2 weeks we will have a quiz. The first quiz will be in week 2 or 3. One of the quizzes will not be counted for grading. Therefore, there will be no makeup for quizzes. In total we will have 7 quizzes. Hence 6 of them will be counted.
• Quiz grades will be normalized, when we have multiple sections. At the end of normalization, the average grade of each section will be the same.
• Projects will be done in groups of 2-3 students. Please form your groups as soon as possible in the beginning of the semester. Group members can be from different sections.
• All students in a group should equally contribute to a project. Each student should know about the whole project (its design and implementation) in every detail. Questions will be asked from projects in the exams or quizzes. The grades from these questions and project grades may be compared, and in case of inconsistency, an investigation may start. A student who claims that he/she did the project (either individually or in a group) is expected to be able to answer all the questions.
• Note that passing the course without taking a midterm exam or final exam is not possible. If you don't take an exam and the associated makeups you will get an FX or F grade from the course.
• You need to have a doctor report to take a makeup exam (please see Bilkent Health Center Student Medical Report Guidelines). If you did not take an exam and have a doctor report, you need to inform the instructor immediately so that you can take a makeup exam.
• You should expect a makeup exam to be more difficult, since you have more time to study.
• Students whose project average is less than a threshold value will not be able to pass the course (will get F), no matter what the other grades are. Threshold will be determined after the final exams (and will not be announced). You should expect project threshold to be around 40/100 (project average) (tentative and may change).
• Students whose midterm+final exams average is less than a threshold may receive an F grade. Hence this should not be a surprise. Therefore it is important that you perform as good as possible in midterm+final, so that your average will be above the threshold, which will be determined at the end of the course when all grades are determined (threshold will not be announced).
• You should expect F threshold to be around 40-50/100 (course total) (tentative and may change).
• The grades and passing thresholds of a previous semester is not an indication of what they will be in the next semester. Therefore do not make assumptions about what thresholds will be.
• There will be around 4 projects. Projects are very important and will be done in Linux operating system using C programming language, unless otherwise stated. Every student needs to do his/her best to do a project. The teaching/learning approach of the course will be learning by doing. Therefore it is very important that you do the projects to really learn and understand in a long-lasting manner.
• You need to learn C immediately. Today, buy a C book and start writing some small C programs. Make sure that you can write programs in C.
• All 4 hours in a week may be used if necessary.
• Grades are posted to the SAPS system.
• If you fail the course but your project average is equal to or greater than the class project average, then you may be allowed to be exempt from projects in the semester that you re-take the course again, if approved. You need to apply for exemption explicitly. If approved, the next time you take the course, you will be exempt from the projects; but your grade (out of 100) from projects will be equal to the class project average on that semester. For example, in semester X, assume your project average is 60, class average is 55, you failed the course, and you are exempted from projects. Assume you take the course in semester Y again. Assume class project average is 50 in semester Y. Then your project average grade will be taken as 50 while calculating your final total in semester Y.
• In homeworks, questions may be selectively graded. That means, the grader can select a subset of the questions and grade only them. Then, the grade of the homework (out of 100) will just depend on those selected questions. The subset may or may not be announced. For example, there may be 4 questions in a homework, and only 2 of them may be graded; each of these two questions, for example, may be 50 pts (out of 100). Which 2 questions will be graded may not be announced.

ABET

The course addresses the following ABET outcomes:

• 6.1) Able to develop and conduct an experiment.
  Measured through parts of Homeworks and Projects. Reports are used in projects. Will require Probability and Statistics Knowledge.
• 6.2) Able to analyze and interpret data, and draw conclusions from experimental data using engineering judgment.
  Measured through parts of Homeworks and Projects. Reports are used in projects. Will require Probability and Statistics Knowledge.

Academic Honesty

Plagiarism is defined as the action of using or copying someone else's idea or work and pretending that you thought of it, or created it. Bilkent University requires that you be aware of the concept and dangers of plagiarism. In order to conform to international academic standards, you must respect the individual thoughts, ideas, and expressions of other authors in sources. In the exams, home-works, and projects in this course, occurrences of plagiarism will be seriously dealt with, leading to punishment through disciplinary procedures which call for a term or two terms of dispelling from the university.