Assessment
Contents
About the unit assessments
What are the assessment items, when are they due, and what are they worth?
The assessment for CITS5501 consists of an online quiz, a mid-semester take-home test, a project, and a final examination.
| Assessment | % of final mark | Assessment dates | Where to submit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 4 online quiz | 5 | Available 11:59 pm Wed 14 Aug Closes 11:59 pm Thu 15 Aug | Moodle |
| Week 7 mid-semester test | 10 | Available 11:59 pm Wed 11 Sep Due 11:59 pm Thu 12 Sep | Moodle |
| Project | 35 | Available 5:00 pm Thu 26 Sep Due 11:59 pm Thu 17 Oct | Moodle |
| Face-to-face paper-based exam | 50 | Due UWA exam period | Completed on paper |
Assessments will be due at 11:59 pm on Thursdays. Any changes to the due date will be announced in the help5501 help forum, as well being noted on this website.
Do not rely on the Unit Outline for exact assessment due dates – the software used to generate the unit outlines is known to be buggy, and may insert incorrect due dates. Instead, use the assessment dates published here (also available from the Schedule). Any changes will be published here, as well as being announced on the unit discussion forum.
Online quizzes, tests and exams must be submitted by the due date and time – this will be enforced strictly (just as it is for face-to-face tests and exams), and late submissions will receive a mark of 0. It is your responsibility to ensure you submit by the due date and time – even if you think a website such as Moodle will not stop you from making a late submission.
No extensions are permitted for quizzes and tests: they must be done on the dates specified (just as for face-to-face tests and exams). For more details, see “Can I get an extension on the deadline for an assessment?” in the unit FAQ.
Your submitted work or answers for any assessment item
may be submitted to plagiarism detectors
such as JPlag, moss or turnitin to detect plagiarism.
The quizzes, tests and exam do contain theoretical questions, but are also intended to assess practical skills and knowledge. They’re not completed on paper, but instead on your own computer, and they may ask you to write compileable and executable code.
Common questions about assessments
Several common questions about assessment are answered on the unit FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page.
These include the following:
- What material is examinable/testable?
- What are the expectations regarding citation of sources/academic
conduct?
(In brief: abide by UWA’s academic conduct policy; be careful not to plagiarize.) - What is the marking rubric for assessments?
- Are the quizzes/tests/exams open book?
Assessment item details
Week 4 quiz
- This quiz will be available on Moodle.
Quiz details (click to expand)
- Ensure you leave at least 1-2 hours available in which to complete it. If you wait until 2 hours before the due time, and don’t complete it, you will be awarded 0 marks for incomplete questions.
- The quiz will need to be completed in one sitting, and students are allowed only one attempt at it. There is a time limit of 2 hours (though the quiz should take less than that).
- Once you’ve started the quiz, it’s best not to leave your browser or computer unattended – the quiz may time out, or the browser may refresh, and Moodle may record you as not having completed the quiz.
- The quiz is open-book; you can look at any book, website or software you like. However, the answers must be your own work (not that of anyone else) and in your own words, and you must not distribute your answers to other people.
- Ensure you have a good Internet connection when sitting the quiz – you should sit it either on a UWA lab computer, or at home, but not using WiFi or a mobile device, as these could drop out part-way through.
- If you use a WiFi or mobile connection and it fails, you won’t be given extra time to complete the quiz. If for some reason you can’t access the quiz on Moodle, email me immediately from your University email account with a screenshot or photo showing the problem.
- Once you’ve finished the quiz, take and keep a screenshot of your completed attempt.
Mid-semester test
The week 7 mid-semester test will be made available in week 7 on Moodle, under “Week 7 mid-semester test”. You will have 24 hours to complete the test, and should submit it via Moodle.
The same instructions apply to the mid-semester test as for the week 4 quiz.
Project
The project for the unit, worth 35% of the unit’s marks, is due on Thursday 17 Oct.
It is to be completed individually.
It includes both programming work and written work. Students may make look at any texts or online materials they wish, but any work must be their own, and in their own words. As with all open assessments – any statistical anomalies will be investigated, and anybody may be asked to (orally) explain their thought process in coming up with their answers.
The following project resources are available for you:
- The project description (PDF) (markdown) (Revised 9 Oct 2024, 14 Oct 2024)
- Source code for the project
- A testing area on Moodle, where you can run several (very basic) tests on your submitted project answers. Note that passing these tests is no guarantee of a good mark – they verify only that your project meets minimum standards for a submission.
- An EBNF parsing command-line tool for Linux:
ebnf-parse.tgz
This should run on almost any x86-64 Linux system. Un-tar the executable and run./ebnf-parse -hfor options. Amanpage (inmanand Markdown formats) explaining the use is contained in the tar file.
Exam
The exam is a face-to-face, paper-based exam, held during the UWA examination period. For the exact time and venue, consult your exam timetable using StudentConnect.
The exam is not open book. You are permitted to bring into the exam one A4, double-sided page of notes (handwritten or typed).
Past exam papers
For revision purposes, you may find it useful to look at some older paper-based exams, which are available via the LMS – look under “Previous exams”. These exam papers are provided only to CITS5501 students for study purposes, and may not be published or distributed elsewhere.
(Note that although the UWA Library’s “OneSearch” search facility lists some past exams as being available via OneSearch when “CITS5501” is entered as a query, the content of the unit has changed significantly since they were released, and they are no longer a good guide to what you can expect.)
The best use of past exams is for your practice purposes – if possible, try writing answers and timing how long you take. I do not publish answers to past exams for two reasons:
- For many of the questions, there is no one correct answer. The exam questions often require you to analyse a scenario and argue in favour of a particular decision or test design. Questions like this are assessed on your ability to identify relevant factors and justify a decision/conclusion, and not on whether you have mentioned particular things in your answer.
- Providing an “answer” often encourages students to think that if they have read through the answers and understood it, they have revised well for the exam. This is not correct! You need to actually go through the process of writing an answer yourself.
However, if you have attempted a previous year’s exam, I encourage you to discuss your answers with me in order to get feedback. See “Are past exams available?” in the unit FAQ.
Peer review exercise
You might like to try the following exercise (taken from the 2022 version of the course) as exam practice with other students. First, read through the rubric, so you know how questions like this are assessed. Then, attempt to answer the questions under exam conditions. Finally, swap answers with other students, read through the solutions, and assign a mark and comments. This exercise should provide helpful insight into what sort of answers can be expected to achieve low, high or moderate marks in exam questions.
- Exercise questions (PDF)
- Exercise rubric (PDF)
- Exercise solutions (PDF)