Assessment

The course will be assessed by way of two supervised Laboratory Examinations. The first of these will take place early in Term 2, the second at the end of Term 3. The overall subject mark will be a weighted sum of the marks achieved in these two examinations: 25% from the first, 75% from the second.

The format of the examinations will be very similar to the format of the normal lab exercises. Each student will work alone. The examinations will be of three hours duration. Instructions will be accessed via the World Wide Web. The work to be done will be derived from work done during the normal lab sessions - though it will, of course, differ in detail. A report will be required, submitted electronically. This report will form the basis for marking the examination.

Detailed information on the format of the report, and the marking scheme to be used, are available in the Laboratory Report Guidelines.

It was originally intended that students repeating this course 1995/96 would be required to sit both lab examinations, in exactly the same way as students attending for the first time. However, there are some differences in detail in the material being examined in the first lab exam in 1995/96 compared to 1994/95. In the light of this, the examination requirements for repeat students have now been relaxed and amended as follows:

1. Repeat students are not required to sit the first Lab examination. Instead they may sit only a special final lab examination, which will be of similar content and format to the final lab examination for 1994/95, and will count for 100% of the repeat mark.

2. Alternatively, at their own option, repeat students may opt to be assessed on exactly the same basis as first time students, sitting both lab exams, with the standard marking allocation (25% + 75%) between them. Note carefully that these examinations will be based on the material presented in 1995/96, and this does differ in some respects from that presented in 1994/95. Specifically, in 1995/96, a special software module (safe-c) has been used. This provides certain simplified facilities in a packaged form. This also relies on the use of a different C compiler (GNU cc). Repeat students opting to sit the same lab exams as first time students must ensure that they familiarise themselves with this module, with the GNU cc compiler and with the specific lab exercises assigned in session 1995/96. All the relevant reference information is available in the normal way on the School Web site.

If you are a repeat student, it will be assumed that you are accepting assessment by model 1 above, unless you indicate otherwise, in writing, to the faculty administrative Assistant Ms. Valerie Hogg no later than 20th December 1995.