EN122 Grading Contract Spring 2007

I tell you now what assignments (asgns) you need to finish in order to receive C/S, B, A, or A+ (A with distinction).

C/S: Complete asgns
Eye Mech
SCC
VOR
Optokinesis
Feedback
Gain Mod
Saccade Mod
Direc Selec
SP Init
plus any one other asgn,
and pass the Push-Pull Quiz
and the Strabismus Quiz
and submit a valid entry in the Spring Break Coloring Contest.
If you complete one of the additional asgns needed for a B, so much the better, you will one step closer to a B.
You also must attend the last class meeting, fill out student evaluations, and submit an answer to a short quiz, "Representing Differential Equations in Simulink." (free refreshments at last class meeting)

B: Meet the requirements for a C, plus asgns
Hair Cell
Saccade Cancel
and one of Vergence/Saccade or Vergence/Speed
and pass the Retina Quiz

A: Meet the requirements for a B, plus asgns
Sync
Nystagmus
Push Pull
Saccade Dysmet
Rod Mod
Area MT
Pupil
Head-Eye
Vis Res Mod
and pass the Cerebellum Quiz

Assignments are linked on the website scorecard. Each asgn write-up may have background information, suggestions for progress, and links to further reading. Of most importance in the write-up are the requirements for the assignment. You must demonstrate the requirements (or a subset of them, in some cases) before moving on to the oral "fault tolerance question" phase of the asgn. We arrange that there is a significant gap between the what's said in the write-up and what you likely need to do to finish. In some cases we may show a fragment of a complete model; in other cases a complete model is suggested, but with no parameters given.

We are aware that the Princeton Faculty voted in Spring 2004 to limit A grades to 35% of the grades at Princeton. In the future there may be a challenging partial credit "Labzilla" that will determine what fraction of students will receive an A. LabZilla not be in effect for 2007.

Requirements for an C, B, A must be met by noon Tuesday May 15, 2007. Otherwise there are no particular deadlines for EN122.

A+: Meet the requirements for an A, plus one more VIS RES MOD asgn before 5pm of the last day of instruction for the semester. A student who meets the requirements for an A+ can be deputized as an Honorary Teaching Assistant and will be empowered to sign off other students' asgns until the end of the semester.

Index card limit: At the beginning of each week we will place in a box in room 095 a set of N + M index cards, where N is the maximum number of students who showed up to EN122 during the first 3 class meetings, and M is the number of students currently in the class. Each of the M cards will have one of the current students names on it; the other N cards will be uncommitted floaters. Each time a student finishes an asgn that student will receive one of the index cards, starting with the card that has his or her name on it. The N floater cards will be given out to students who, that week, finish additional asgns. For a particular student, once his or her earmarked card is claimed, and all the floaters have been taken, that student needs to wait until the next week to have another asgn signed off.

For the first week and the last week of the course only N floater cards will be available.

A week begins on Monday.

The future. You are not allowed to have more than one asgn signed off per day. If you finish two asgns on the same day you can have the second one signed off "in the future". The next future for each week is the upcoming weekend. There is no future in the last week of class.

Your official times to have asgns signed off are M-F between 10a.m. and 4pm, excluding noon-1pm and the TuTh 1pm lecture time. The lab 095 door will be lock automatically after 5pm. A lab calendar linked on the website will highlight available times.

Who signs your scorecard: While the TA is empowered to sign off any of the asgns by asking the FTQ, on the scorecard you hand in at least half of the asgns must be signed off by JD.

Finishing an Assignment:
As you will see on the link above, each asgn has specifications. Once you have met the specifications of an asgn, arrange to demonstrate it to JD or a TA. Once we agree that the asgn works as required, you will be asked a "Fault Tolerance Question" (FTQ), which will be of the form, "What will happen at the output of your simulation if we delete this connection? or change that gain? or alter the initial conditions? or change an input? or reverse the wiring this way?" We may also have you turn your back while we delete or alter various wires in your simulation, then ask you to repair the model. You'll want to think carefully about the answer: if your answer is wrong then you must try another question, waiting until the next day before the next FTQ can be asked. No partial credit on FTQs.

Vague or evasive answers, like "The same thing happened to a friend of mine," or "It just won't work anymore," or "It depends on what you mean by 'what'," or "I've gotta go have lunch now," are unacceptable.

Keeping Score
Once you meet the requirements for a lab we will hand you a signed index card, then initial your scorecard. You can also enter your progress on the public scoreboard in the lab. Go celebrate!

No Partial Credit. No partial credit is allowed in "grading" of an asgn. All specs must be met. If you are frustrated by an asgn, seek help, either from the reading, a fellow student, the TA, or Prof. Daniels. Our assurance that you didn't just copy a file from someone else is that you will successfully answer your FTQ (we may also compare the exact file size in bytes of your simulation to other simulation file sizes...).

No Lab Reports. There is no requirement to hand in a Lab Report for any assignment. But you should document your simulations, coloring functional groupings, labeling inputs and outputs (particularly outputs of integrators), and making text-in-model notes about how each simulation works. In fact, at the end of the semester we need to collect Examples of Student Work (for ABET), so be prepared with your Simulink/Matlab folder at that time. If you ask me for help on an asgn and you do not have a well documented model, you may have to put up with me complaining out loud about your style of modeling.

Weekly appearance time: Each of you will tell me a time of the week when you guarantee to be in room 095. The times can be on the hour or at 20 minute intervals. I in turn will guarantee to be there with you, to check off asgns or help you with Simulink. If there are others in the lab waiting for help, I will limit my help to 20 minutes. If I am more than 5 minutes late (based on the wall clock in 095) then you will receive one Get-Out-of-FTQ-Free (GOOFTQF) card for your future use. I may want to collect cell phone numbers, to call you if you are more than 15 minutes late, and life in 095 gets boring.

"Time is Nature's way of preventing everything from happening all at once."

Note that quite a few asgns are required for an A, so most weeks you will need to complete more than one asgn in order to qualify for an A.

There is no midterm; there is no final exam.
Grading depends on completion of asgns, quizzes, and timing of your work. The quizzes will normally be given in class, for 20 minutes; for each quiz there will normally be ONE question to answer. If you answer correctly your scorecard will be signed (no FTQ involved in quizzes). If not, there will be a second version of the quiz, within a week, given as a take-home. If you don't answer that question correctly an oral quiz will be given...until you do give a correct answer.

Collaboration: Your are allowed and in fact encouraged to collaborate with your fellow students. Note on the public scoreboard who has finished a lab you're interested in. Collaboration turns to plagiarism when you simply copy wholesale someone else's work and try to pass it off as your own. When you demonstrate a simulation we may take note of the exact size in bytes of the underlying file, to compare with others' work.

After April there are no more guaranteed appearance times; and while we will be around to sign off working asgns, there is no guarantee of thorough troubleshooting for asgns that fail to meet specs.

Otherwise, up to the end of April, we guarantee that for all asgns required for a B we will help you complete each simulation to the point just needing an FTQ to finish. The process of doing it all for you may be annoying for both you and me, but less annoying than the frustration of a dead end.

Finishing the course: When you've finished enough asgns for the grade you want, and have filled out student evaluation forms, turn in your scorecard, likely right after the last lecture. I will check your scorecard for proper signatures and dates. We will also find your IP folder and place it in the EN122 archive folder for the year.

Qualifications and Authority. I guarantee that the requirements for the various grades will not be increased during the semester, although various assignment requirements may be fine-tuned along the way. I will be the authority for granting any variances from the requirements, and will listen to protests that certain asgns were "too hard". It may be that circumstances beyond your control (medical, legal) would qualify you for an extremely time-limited Incomplete grade.

Hope: That you find the contract grading method an improvement over the beat-the-clock cram-for-midterm, cram-for-final, grading-on-the-curve approach of most other courses.
JD Daniels