CSCI 136 :: Spring 2021

Data Structures & Advanced Programming

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Midterm Exam Logistics and Resources

Format

The midterm exam will be administered as an assignment on GLOW. The exam will be available at the start of Lab on Thursday, March 25^th, and you will have the entirety of your scheduled lab meeting to complete the exam.

As we would normally do during our scheduled lab, the instructors will create a private Zoom breakout room for each student. If you have a question, we will be able to join you in your breakout room to help you. We will start the meeting 10 minutes early so that the full lab period can be utilized for the exam. Please arrive a few minutes early if your schedule permits.

Once we have sent all students into their breakout rooms, you will have 1.5 hours to complete the exam. Here is what that means:

• The time that you actively work on the exam should not exceed 1.5 hours; this time limit does not include any time spent resolving technical difficulties. We understand that technical difficulties are not only possible, but with a group as large as this, it is not unlikely that someone will experience a technological issue that is outside of their control. That is OK. If you are disconnected or if you have some other issue, please do the following:
  • Message us using Slack and then try to reconnect to Zoom. Upon reconnecting, let us know that you had an issue, and will try to figure out an appropriate accomodation. If you are unsuccessful reconnecting, then
  • Roughly document the issue in a few short sentences (e.g., approximately when did the issue occur, what did you observe, what led to the issue, how did it affect your exam-taking, etc.). We would like to know these details so that we can fix the issue in the future (if possible), and also to ensure that we take appropriate steps to prevent you from being negatively affected by it. If you are unable to reconnect to Zoom, then when you submit the exam (or decide you are unable to resolve the issue on your own), email us your description.
  • Once you/we are able to resolve the issue, continue taking the exam and resume your 1.5 hour “timer”. Do not stress out; we trust you to do the right thing, and that means we trust that you will exercise good judgment.

Available Resources

Because we care more about problem-solving than memorization, we have decided to allow select materials to be used during your exam-taking period.

• We will provide relevant interfaces and implementation details as part of the exam when appropriate.
• For any question, you are allowed to write Java code from scratch, then compile and run your code. Note: We are looking for correct reasoning and understanding of concepts more than perfectly syntactically correct Java. You do not need to edit/compile/run your code (and doing so may take time away from other exam work) but you are permitted to do so if you think it will help you complete the exam more effectively.
• You may consult the textbook, slides, and assignments that are linked directly from the course webpage. While we don't prohibit you from looking at the videos, we think it would be a very inefficient use of your exam time and so we advise against it!
• You may consult the official Oracle Javadoc webpages, and you may consult the Structure5 documentation.
• You may look at your own private CS136 lab repositories.

However, you may not use any search engines or public webpages, and you may not discuss any exam questions with anyone else, during or after the exam.

Although we strongly encourage you to perform calculations, draw pictures, and/or draft answers on scratch paper, we cannot grade this work. Please make sure that the answers you submit represent the work that you would like us to consider.

GLOW Idiosyncrasies

As an aside, GLOW may attempt to assign a "grade" as soon as you submit your exam. If this happens, ignore that grade as it is not a reflection of how we will be evaluating your work. We are intentionally not attempting to use the autograding features in GLOW because they are misleading; we will carefully review your exams by hand and provide the same individualized feedback that we would to a physical exam.

GLOW may also alert you each time an individual problem is graded. These alerts should also be ignored. When the exams are completely graded, we will let you know.