ENGN123(0)    Grading Contract    Fall, 2009   by JD Daniels

I tell you in advance what is required to earn a C/S, B and what are the boundary conditions for earning an A.

For links to write-ups of the labs and quizzes, go to the Scorecard.

To pass the course (C/S), do Labs 0, 0.5, 1, 3, 4pre, 5, 7, 9, & A and answer Quiz 2 correctly, and fill out evaluation forms on the last day of class.

To earn a B meet the requirements for a C plus Labs 2, 4B, 6 and 8 and correctly answer Quiz 1.

What it means to "meet the requirements."
You'll notice the Lab Writeups are in the form of specifications: "do this..., do that...", or measurements: "What is the common mode rejection ratio?" You must meet all specs and be able to demonstrate any measurements. There is no partial credit.

Invariably, you and your lab partner will have put together some circuit, created some LabVIEW virtual instrument, or built some mechanical arrangement of sensors and substrates. If it works as expected, great. Otherwise I or my TAs are there to help you troubleshoot problems; in fact if you're frustrated we can help you build any B-level lab from scratch. (A process whose detail you may decide is too uncomfortable to endure to completion...)

Remember, what's important is demonstrating something that works: how you got there--all on your own, with the help of fellow students, or the TAs, or me--is not part of the grading process.

The Fault Tolerance Question. Once you and your lab partner have demonstrated successfully the requirements of a lab, You will be asked (individually) a question about what will be different if a wire is pulled out, or an input is changed, or a signal is rerouted, or a line of code is changed, or perhaps some calculation based on theory you have learned from lecture... it will be at our discretion as to what kind of question you will be examined with. You'll want to think carefully about the answer: if you're wrong then you must try another question, waiting until the next day before the next FTQ can be asked.

I or the TA will be the judge of whether your answer includes enough information to be correct. We estimate you may think for about 10-15 minutes before answering.

"Proliferation of A's": The Brown Daily Hearld of Nov 20, 2008 quoted Provost Kertzer as saying at a faculty meeting, when asked his opinion about a survey that said over 50% of grades at Brown are A's, "I don't think it's a good thing. I think it's a problem." We here at EN123 take his remark to mean that the administration / faculty is planning something here like what the Princeton faculty voted for in Spring 2004, to limit A's to 35% of the grades at Princeton.

For 2009 we will limit the maximum number of A's in EN123 to 55% of the number of students in the course. By "number of students in the course" = N we mean the enrollment just after the add/drop deadline passes. If after that time someone drops the course, that drop will not decrease N. The maximum number of A's will be ceiling(0.55*N) where "ceiling" generates a rounded-up integer. For example if there are 31 students enrolled then the maximum number of A's to be awarded will be rounded-up: 0.55*31 = 17.05 =>18.

To be eligible for an A you need to meet the requirements for a B, pass one lab beyond that, from a choice { B, LT, Rhino, etc} and pass Quiz 3. (You may need to finish more labs to insure you receive an A.)

There will be two ways to be graded for a lab or a quiz:
(1) In the matter of reaching credit for C or B, you meet the requirements spelled out above--there is no number score, just a check mark on your scorecard and the scoreboard. No lab report is needed.
(2) There will be points associated with each lab or quiz; these points will matter only if you are on the path to an A. Normally there will be about 10 points per lab or quiz, but there may be points deducted--for example if you miss a fault tolerance question; if you require extensive help designing and building the lab; if you answer a quiz question wrong the first time; if you miss a measurement or are out of range from a reasonably correct answer and need help to adjust your "virtual instrument" or circuit or code. Each lab writeup will indicate the points and deductions involved.

On your scorecard and in a seperate log book, and in an seperate EXCEL spreadsheet and on a name-encrypted page of the EN123 website your numerical scores will be kept. For those on the path to an A, every Friday (after the first student moves beyond the B-level) we will post on the EN123 website an update of the rank order of A-path students. Look for your student ID number and your total-to-now score. By "A-path student" we mean someone who has done one lab beyond B requirements and passed Quiz 3, even if that student hasn't met all the B requirements yet.

An A with distinction ("A+") may be awarded to the top 4 students on the A list as of the penultimate week of the course. An A+ student can be deputized as an Honorary Teaching Assistant for the last week of class and be empowered to sign off other students' labs! Being in the top 4 students on the A-path list by the 1st of December will guarantee you an A in EN123.

CPR: Suppose you try for an A and don't make the 55% cut. I will be happy to write you a CPR stating that if Brown had +/- grades, you would have earned an A-.

All students must fill out evaluation forms for the course; this requirement will normally be met by attending the last lecture of EN123, where the course will be reviewed and refreshments served.

The good news: There are no problem sets, no midterm, no final exam and no lab reports to hand in. Hey, there's not even a textbook to buy... All your effort will be in the design and implementation of hardware, software and wet-ware solutions to the Lab problems, and correctly answering various quizzes.

Deadlines
You can have Labs or Quizzes signed off until Noon, Friday, Dec 11, 2009. One exception: Lab 8 must be finished before Thanksgiving.

EN123 Exclusion Principle ("Time is Nature's way of preventing everything from happening all at once.")
You can have only one lab signed off per day. Furthermore, we institute the following scheme to limit the number of labs signed off per week:

Index card limit: At the beginning of each week we will place in a box in BaHo Lab 095 a set of 2*N index cards, where N is the number of student enrolled in EN123 (In 2005 N was 28, in 2006 N was 24, in 2007 it was 18, in 2008 N was 27...). Each of N cards will have one of the current students names on it; the other N cards will be uncommitted floaters. Each time a student finishes a lab that student will receive one of the index cards, starting with the card which has his or her name on it. The N floater cards will be given out to students who, that week, finish additional labs. For a particular student, once his or her earmarked card is claimed, and all the floaters have been taken, the student needs to wait until the next week to have a additional lab signed off.

For the first week of the course, Columbus Day Week, Thanksgiving week, and the last week of the course, only N floater cards will be available.

A week begins on Monday.

Your official times to have labs signed off are M-F between 10a.m. and 4pm, excluding noon-1pm and the MWF 10a.m. lecture time. Lab 095 will be locked after 5:15pm, but you can stay later if you're already inside...

The Future: If you finish a second Lab in one day you can have it signed off in the future--normally the next weekend... For the last week of the course there is no "future".

Who signs your scorecard: While the 2009 grad student TA Matthew Gillette (and emeritus TA John Raiti, and UG TAs Chris Hartman, Deborah Gorth, Jovan Julien) are empowered to sign off any of the labs by approving your answer to your FTQ, on the scorecard you hand in at least half of the labs must be signed off by JD.

Lab Partners
You should team up with a lab partner. Normally a lab that meets specifications will be demonstrated with both lab partners present, then each of you will answer a "fault tolerance question" individually to have the lab signed off on your scorecards. There are no lab partners for Labs 0 or 0.5 or 6.

You and your lab partner will pick a team name (a Greek letter or military alphabet term like Alpha or Bravo, or colors like turquoise or pink, or names of roses, like Othello...) and sign up for a guaranteed appearance time (GAT) where once a week we meet in person in the lab and I note your progress in the course, and you have priority for my attention. On the website will be a weekly calendar listing all the allotted GATs.

Additionally, we will urge you to consider three more two-hour sessions per week, since most of the work in EN123 takes place in the lab. Do not schedule yourself after 4pm.

If one lab partner is not present during the first presentation of a lab, the second partner will need to demonstrate everything again at his or her convenience.

Keeping Score
Once you meet the requirements for a Lab I or a TA will hand you a signed index card, then initial your scorecard. You can also enter your progress on the public scoreboard in the lab. Then you should go away and celebrate... When you finish the course you must hand in in person to me your scorecard.

Documentation
While it is not necessary to hand in your designs and notes about the various labs, it will turn out to be important to keep notes, data sheets, and good documentation, both for troubleshooting and for answering FTQs (see below). If you ask for help we may request to see your circuit design drawn out on paper. Yes, LabVIEW is basically self-documenting, but it will be useful to add notes to your panels and diagrams to remind you, me or my TA what is going on with your design. If we ask you a question about your circuit diagram and your response is to fumble through scraps of paper, no one will be happy. If you wire a circuit with random colors of wire, or all the same color, or wires that are too long, or too short, confusion may arise.

And see website section on Saving Examples of Student Work for ABET.

Getting started.
Each of you must do Labs 0 and 0.5 first. Then you're qualified to continue as you see fit. It's probably best to do the labs in sequence, since there may be issues with parts available. I estimate it may take anywhere from one to 10 hours to finish a lab. Lab partners should pair off after Labs 0 and 0.5.

The Fault Tolerance Question redux: I or a TA will be the judge of whether your answer includes enough information to be correct. We estimate you may think for about 10-15 minutes before answering.

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

Over the course of the semester, you may spend a comparable amount of time with oral "fault tolerance questions" (FTQs) as you would sitting through a midterm and final exam.

Help. If you're frustrated, double check power supply voltages on your hardware, double check the correct chip has the correct pins wired, likely with a color-coded scheme. For software, single-step through the diagram, or set displays to show what's going on where (for example count loop indices). Once you've exhausted the basics of troubleshooting, your next level of help is sleeping on your problem overnight. After that go over the problem again with your lab partner. Next seek help from the TA. If you're still frustrated, seek me out for advice. I will first ask you to show me your documentation, and we may go through a Socratic question-and-answer cycle. But if nothing works to fix your C or B level circuit/software I will rebuild the lab myself, while you watch. In fact if your work is a big mess to begin with, starting over may be the first step... You are guaranteed that you will eventually have a working lab for C or B levels, and that your only obstacle then to having a lab signed off is answering correctly a FTQ. For A-path labs you can be given advice about how to alleviate your frustration, but we do not guarantee we will build the lab for you from scratch.

Quizzes
At times during the semester there will be in-class one-question quizzes handed out. We estimate it may take you about 20 minutes to figure out your answer. More "no partial credit": Those who don't figure out a correct Quiz answer will have the opportunity to take a similar quiz again, a few days later. If a wrong answer appears again, you will be given an oral quiz until you generate a correct answer. Repeated taking of a quiz will lower your score on A-path quizzes. Signing off quizzes does not count against the one-lab-per-day limitation, and you will not need an index card for a successful quiz.

The last week: During the last week of the course there will be help on an as-needed basis. No "office hours" or GAT will be scheduled in the lab. While we will be around BaHo to sign off working labs, there is no guarantee of thorough troubleshooting for labs that fail to meet specs. You are urged to finish all the labs you want by the last day of instruction. Furthermore, after Thanksgiving there will be less immediate help available (no "guaranteed appearance times" penalties...)

Finishing. When you've finished enough labs and quizzes for the grade you want, and have filled out student evaluation forms, turn in your scorecard to me, likely right after the last lecture. I will check your scorecard for proper signatures and dates.

Qualifications and Authority. I guarantee that the requirements for the various grades will not be increased during the semester, although various lab requirements may be fine-tuned or tweaked along the way. I will be the authority for granting any variances from the requirements, and will listen to protests that certain labs were "too hard." Circumstances beyond your control (medical, legal) may in my judgement qualify you for a time-limited Incomplete grade. In 2009 consideration will be given to students who went into H1N1 flu quarantine.