Lab credit and the course exam (test) are completely independent.
In short, students are required to solve lab assignments during the semester and then pass a final lab test. All the assignments are mandatory and must be submitted on time. In addition, students need at least 7 points from the code reviews to be allowed to proceed to the final test.
Each lab will focus on one assignment (usually broken down into several steps/tasks). The assignments are incremental, which means that your code and knowledge obtained in one assignment may be required for the subsequent assignment(s). Your solutions (code) from the assignments can also be used in the final lab test (the better you write the solutions, the easier will be the test).
The lab assignments (as the name suggests) are solved during the labs for the most part. If a student does not complete the assignment during the labs or misses the class altogether, the assignment is expected to be finished at home. In any case, the assignments have to be uploaded to ReCodEx before a given deadline (check the page of your labs for specifics).
The teacher will review the (last) submissions and write individual feedback to the students (also in ReCodEx). ReCodEx will give you no points, but the points may be awarded by the teacher if the review passes without any serious issues (especially without unforgivable curses). Optionally a student may choose to fix the issues and request another review, so the points can be awarded later. The additional reviews are acceptable within 3 weeks after the deadline. The amount of points awarded is fixed: 1 point for the first assignment, 2 points for seconds, and 6 points for the 6th assignment and they are granted atomically (the whole amount or none at all). Students need at least 7 points to proceed to the final test.
The final test will take place in the lab (like the final test in Programming I and II courses) and it will comprise one assignment which could be easily implemented using the knowledge (or even pieces of your code) from the previous six lab assignments. An example of such an assignment could be a digital dice for AD&D game. The execution details regarding the final tests will be announced before the end of the semester.
Please, make yourself acquainted with the authors' ethical guidelines. It might prevent future misunderstandings regarding the authorship of your lab assignments. Severe violations of these guidelines will not be tolerated.
The technical details regarding deadlines, submission acceptance, or code reviews are specified individually by the lab teachers.
The exam will be in the form of a test, which is taken in labs (at a PC) and evaluated by a computer using Quixam application. Examples of testing questions will be presented in the last lecture. The questions will target mainly your understanding, not your memorized knowledge. In other words, you do not need to remember exactly all the constants or precise names of MIPS instructions; however, you need to understand the concepts even to solve simple computational/algorithmic assignments (e.g., put given instructions in the right order or translate a virtual address into a physical address).
Exam dates will be announced before the summer exam period in SIS where you need to enroll for them. Exam terms will be added if necessary, but we are not planning any regular terms in September. Credit is not required for taking the exam; however, you need both the credit and pass the exam to complete the course.
The grading is:
We have decided to give the students one special dispensation during the exam. A student may decide to leave the test after the testing session has started. However, the exam term would be forfeited (the same way as if the student did not arrive without a due excuse) and each student can do this at most once. This way you can avoid receiving a bad mark in case you underestimate the preparation and you realize this during the test. On the other hand, once the test is graded, the received mark will be always written in the SIS.
The test results may be consulted after the test, but as a general policy, we will not give you the exact correct answers nor corroborate your assumptions about correct answers. However, we will gladly clarify any principles and explicit knowledge that were used in particular questions.
Creating new sets of questions is quite time-consuming and we would like to prevent the students from studying the answers to particular questions instead of studying the course itself. Therefore, publishing test questions is strictly prohibited!
It might be also worth reading our reasons for having the exam in this format, which is summarized on the student's rebuttal page.