General information

The practical labs contribute 50% to the course assessment. This weightage is split into 5 sit-in labs. The lab schedule is as follows.

Schedule

Week	Date	Lab Type	CA
Week 3	25/01	Introductory Lab	0% but compulsory attendance
Week 4	01/02	Take-home Lab 1
Week 5	08/02	Sit-in Lab 1	8%
Week 6	15/02	Take-home Lab 2
Week 7	29/02	Sit-in Lab 2	9%
Week 8	07/03	Take-home Lab 3
Week 9	14/03	Sit-in Lab 3	10%
Week 10	21/03	Take-home Lab 4
Week 11	28/03	Sit-in Lab 4	11%
Week 12	04/04	Take-home Lab 5
Week 13	11/04	Sit-in Lab 5	12%
Week 13	14/04 (tentative)	Make-up for Sit-in Lab 5

Make-up Rule

Take-home lab attendance is not compulsory.
Sit-in labs are mandatory and graded. If you miss one, you may have a chance to make up for it.
If you have a valid MC or leave document, you'll be able to accumulate its percentage to your next assessed lab.
If you do not have a valid document, you may attend a make-up sit-in lab at the very end of the semester. The labs will get progressively harder, hence try not to miss any.

Cheating

We have detected cheating cases in the past and have had to refer them to the disciplinary committee. Please see Statute 06 with regards to the cheating offense - penalties include suspension, a fine of $10,000 or even expulsion. Needless to say, it is an extremely traumatizing experience for the student who is the subject of the disciplinary proceeding.

Introductory Lab

An introductory lab to familiarize students with sunfire/cygwin - the environments used for the labs - will be conducted in week 3. There is no assessment for this lab but attendance is mandatory as tutors will give important information on the labs.

Take-home Labs

The first real lab begins from week 4. Each week questions will be released before the scheduled take-home lab (under Labs tab). You are encouraged to read up ahead to know what to expect in the lab.

Take-home labs are for your own practice and not graded. You can submit your program to Code Crunch system to check the correctness of your output.

These are called take-home because you may complete your programs at home. However you are encouraged to attend the lab sessions, as they will be conducted by the tutors who can give feedbacks on your programs, answer your questions, and provide additional suggestions to practice on.

Sit-in Labs

The sit-in labs will be held in weeks 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13. As the name suggests, you must be physically at your lab venue to complete the program. The questions will only be delivered at the beginning of each lab session by your invigilator (also your tutor). The duration for each sit-in lab is 1 hour 30 minutes.

You will be barred from entry if you are more than 15 minutes late. No one is allowed to leave early.

The sit-in labs are open-book and very similar to any other tests that you have encountered. You are not allowed to communicate with anyone other than your tutor(s) in this period of time.

Grading

As mentioned, take-home labs are for your own practice and do not contribute to any part of your CA.

The grading scheme for sit-in labs are tentatively as follows:

30% Style
- 5% Meaningful comments/variable names
- 5% Compactness (not using unnecessary variables/functions), no compilation warnings
- 10% Code re-use/Modularity (not applicable until functions are taught - in such case each component above weighs 10%)
- 10% Good readability (good indentation and spacing between the lines)
70% Correctness (Note that the components below may vary depending on the lab)
- 10% Compilability (Can your code be compiled correctly without warnings?)
- 10% Simplicity of solution (Do you use a loop where a selection statement may suffice?)
- 10% Output (Does your output match exactly the output we require without extra spaces or newlines?)
- 40% Logic (Is your logic correct?)

Note that the sample test cases listed in the questions only serve to test if your program is wrong. You may pass all the test cases but still get 0 mark for correctness (i.e. if you hard-code the solutions based on the sample test cases, or use a method that is explicitly forbidden in the question).