CSE 352 Workload, Grading, and Policies


Workload

The course consists of the following components:

  1. Lectures: There will be about 30 lectures. Attendance and participation is expected at all of them.  The calendar lists all the lectures and links to the lectures slides.
  2. Reading:  We will much of cover Chapters 1-5 of Harris and Harris and Chapters 3 and 4 of Bryant and O’Hallaron.  I will expect you to keep up with the reading assignments.
  3. Laboratory Assignments: The lab assignments will be the focus of the course work and will be where you learn the CAD tools and put together your processor. Lab assignments are not canned.  They are open-ended design sessions that will carry over from one week to the next and you will often need more time than the 3 hour lab session to complete your work. Attendance during the scheduled lab time when the TAs are available is very important. Please come to lab prepared so that you get as much done as possible with the extra help.
    Laboratory assignments will be closely tied to the written homework assignments and are intended to give you a taste of working with real digital hardware.
    At the start of the quarter, you will work on labs individually. Toward the end of the quarter, as the processor gets more complicated, you will be able to work in pairs.
  4. Assignments: Written homework with design problems will be assigned to reinforce class concepts.  Many of these will mesh with the lab assignments and will require you to use the CAD design tools.
  5. Weekly quizzes: There will be a 15 minute quiz every Friday.  I will drop your low quiz grade.  Please don’t ask for a makeup quiz except in unusual circumstances.
  6. Final exam: A two-hour exam during finals week as per the University’s final exam schedule.

We will try to ensure that the workload is typical for a four-credit course, namely, nine to twelve hours per week outside of the lectures. If we do not succeed, please let us know in whichever way you feel the most comfortable (person-to-person, e-mail, anonymous feedback) and explain which parts of the course are causing you to spend too much time non-productively.

We have structured the course so that spending an hour or two per day will maximize your efficiency. You will work this way in the real world—you cannot cram a three-month design assignment into the last night—so you may as well work this way now. Plus, you will understand the material better. If you leave the homework for the day before it is due you will not have time to ask questions when (not if) the software misbehaves.

Software tools frequently consume more time then they should. We have designed the assignments to get you up to speed gradually (over the period of a few weeks), but undoubtedly there will be some start-up cost (as with any new tool). Essentially, you are learning a new language, a compiler, and getting familiar with a process. Every tool imposes a certain model. Your frustration can be high until you assimilate that model and learn to use it effectively. Be sure to use the tutorials, and do not spend countless hours making no progress. Ask for help. Remember that these tools are written by engineers for engineers and will not necessarily conform to expectations you may have of consumer-oriented tools such as Word.

Your assignments must be neat and legible. We will not spend time trying to decipher messy work. We urge you to use the graphical and word processing tools that are readily available to you in all the labs in the department. Please make good use of the schematic diagram editor in the tools you'll be using to make neat circuit diagrams to include in your assignments.


Grading

We will compute your course grade as follows:

Your grade will be determined by how well you understand the material as evidenced by the assignments, labs, and exams. We would like nothing better than to give the entire class a 4.0.


Assignments

Weekly assignments are due at the beginning of class on the assigned due date. Late homework handed in after class starts will incur a 10% penalty (out of the maximum possible credit, i.e. you get punished by 1 point out of 10). We will penalize your assignment an extra 20% per day for each additional day late. Homework will no longer be accepted after a solution has been published (usually within a couple of days).

To get full credit for an assignment, you must, of course, turn in solutions for each assigned problem. A random subset of the assigned problems may be graded depending on how much time we have for grading. You will not know in advance which problems this will be - so make sure to do all of them.  You are strongly encouraged to review the assignment solutions to ensure you understood all the problems whether they are graded or not and make sure to do so carefully before questioning a grade with either the instructor or the teaching assistants.


Collaboration

Homework: Unless specifically stated otherwise, we encourage collaboration on homework, provided (1) You spend at least 15 minutes on each and every problem alone, before discussing it with others, and (2) You write up each and every problem in your own writing, using your own words, and understand the solution fully. Copying someone else's homework is cheating (see below), as is copying the homework from another source (prior year's notes, etc.). Homework assignments are your chance to practice the concepts and make sure you know them well.  The quiz problems will be very similar to the homework problems; if you truly understand the homework, then the quizzes will be easy.

Cheating

Cheating is a very serious offense. If you are caught cheating, you can expect a failing grade and initiation of a cheating case in the University system. Basically, cheating is an insult to the instructor, to the department and major program, and most importantly, to you and your fellow students. If you feel that you are having a problem with the material, or don't have time to finish an assignment, or have any number of other reasons to cheat, then talk with the instructor. Just don't cheat.

To avoid creating situations where copying can arise, never e-mail or post your solution files. You can post general questions about interpretation and tool use but limit your comments to these categories. If in doubt about what might constitute cheating, send the instructor email describing the situation.


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