Midterm Date & Location

The CIT 5950 Midterm will be a take-home exam done over gradescope. It will remain open from Wednesday March 1st at Noon (12:00 pm) till Friday the 3rd at Noon (12:00pm).

Midterm Topics

The midterm topics will cover everything from the beginning of the class. This includes Virtual memory but does not incude what will be discussed in Lecture on Wednesday March 1st. If you are unsure if a topic may be tested, you can ask about whether it is testable material.

Midterm Policies

The exam will be open for 48 hours. You may work on it as little or as much as you like in that time, but it is up to you to submit on time. The exam is intended to take around 2 hours or less, though students are free to work on it for any amount of time within the 48 hour window. During the exam, some course staff will be available on Ed to answer any clarifying questions.

If an emergency happens or the provided time does not work, then PLEASE reach out to the instructor over email immediately.

Here are some of the logistics surrounding the exam:

Clarifications and Asking Questions

During the exam, we will be maintaining an “Exam Clarifications and Frequently Asked Questions” post that will be pinned on Ed. Be sure to check this clarifications post before asking a question as your answer may already be there. If your answer is not there, then you must post a PRIVATE post on Ed and course staff will try to answer it quickly.

Note that course staff are human beings and have other responsibilities (like sleeping), so we may not respond immediately. Travis will monitor Ed for questions, and will stay up Thursday night and wake up early on Friday to make sure any last minute questions are answered quickly.

Exam Format

The exam will be on Gradescope and there will be two Gradescope assignments for you to complete. To access Gradescope, you can either login to Gradescope directly, or you can select the Gradescope tab from the course on canvas. These assignments will automatically open and close with the exam window. YOU MUST DO BOTH ASSIGNMENTS.

Midterm Coding Questions

This is where you will upload some code you write for the midterm. To help with coding, a Codio project will be open during the exam time that will provide an environment for you to work in. You should be able to see (but not open) this environment on Codio. It is called “Midterm Exam Workspace” and we put it under a new category “Exam Workspaces”. You will not be submitting the code through Codio, for the exam you will submit the code to Gradescope and if you use Codio, you must download the files off of it.

Midterm Short Answer and Multiple Choice

These will be more like “typical” exam questions. No PDF or image submission will be necessary for this portion.

Clobber Policy

The clobber policy allows you to demonstrate mastery of past material with regard to exams. In particular, you can replace your midterm exam score with the score of the midterm section of the final exam. This does not apply in reverse, we will not replace your midterm section of the final with your midterm exam score.

To accommodate for the midterm subsection of the final exam being harder/easier than the midterm exam itself, we have a formula that accounts for average and standard deviation.

1. First, we calculate Potential Midterm Clobber Score with: (final_midterm_subscore - final_midterm_mean) / final_midterm_std_deviation * midterm_std_deviation + midterm_mean, capped at 100
2. Then we take the maximum score between the calculated potential clobber score and the grade you had on the midterm. The higher of the two will be used to calculate your course grade.

Cheating

Cheating is a very serious issue and will be vigorously prosecuted. You are not allowed to:

• Discuss the exam with anyone who has taken it before you or will take it after you
• Pass of any work as your own.
• Starting the exam early or ending the exam late

We cannot create a detailed list of everything that would be considered cheating, this would be beyond reasonable to create and to expect students to read. It is up to you know when you are cheating, if you are unsure for any reason if something is cheating, you can ask the instructor. Though if you have to ask, it will likely be considered cheating.

Remember that we have the Clobber policy in place for the midterm, if you end up doing badly, there is always the chance to make it up on the final exam.

The Week of the Exam

Course Plans will be slightly different the week of the exam.

• There will be NO RECITATION the week of the midterm. instead, use that time to work on the midterm.
• We will still have normal office hours, but you should not ask any questions about the midterm in office hours. Instead, refer to the section above for details on asking questions during the exam.