We give five exams in lab where you write a portion of a Java program. We will provide you with one or more program files that have parts of the program you are to complete. You copy the program (and related files) from our server, provide the missing program parts, and turn in the completed program to your TA’s drop box on the server. (Taking Lab Exams, provides details about these steps.)

When evaluating the quality of your lab exam, we use three general criteria:

1. It must run, complete normally (e.g., not hang, error abort, or otherwise exhibit aberrant behavior) and produce correct and correctly formatted output when given any legal input. It is not sufficient that the program runs for some set of legal input, but not for another.

2. The code you write must meet all of the requirements stated in the lab exam and its corresponding assignment. (If there is a difference, the requirements in the exam take precedence.)

3. The code you write must conform to the class’ (and, if applicable, your TA’s) style standards. It must not be unnecessarily complex. It must not use any banned-from-this-course statements, constructs or approaches; in particular it may not

• use a break statement, except at the end of a case block of a switch statement
• use a short-cut operator (e.g., ++, --) in a statement with any other operator or method call except when it operates on an array cell; for example, i++ and --A[i] are permissible; i + j-- and A[i++]-- are not

You may use non-banned statements more advanced than we’ve covered (to that point of the course), but it is up to you to use them reasonably. You can also add private fields, constants and methods to those provided to you as part of the exam, within the constraints described in Taking Lab Exams, but you do so at your own risk. You can add additional comments to explain your work. You may not otherwise modify the exam's programs; in particular, you cannot add code to, or change code in, methods other than those the exams says you are to complete. (All methods you are to complete have the phrase "Your code goes here".)

Your exam will be scored as follows:

-- (not taken) — the test was not turned in, the test folder was empty, or no work towards completing the exam was done (see below for details)

NP (not passed) — the program does not run, or
it does run, but produces incorrect output for legal input, or
it violates one or more of the restrictions stated above or
its style violates course standards to the point that it interferes with a trained reader’s ability to follow the code

P (passed) — the program meets the three criteria above, or
it meets the criteria except that the program exhibits only some minor style problems

You must get a score of “P” on all the lab exams to get a course grade of C or higher; see the Course Reference for details. If you think your exam was graded incorrectly, take the matter up with the TA. If that does not resolve the issue, see the instructor.

The point of lab exams is to insure you know the basics of program design and Java coding. You can retake an exam you failed—and take it again—as much as your time and our resources allow, up through the last offered retake time.

View retakes as last resorts! There is plenty to do in this course without the added burden of retaking lab exams. You could easily spend so much time on retakes that you are unprepared for subsequent lab exams, thus putting you further and further behind in the course.

We will not offer exams early; course resources and security issues will just not allow for it.

You are eligible to retake a lab exam only 1) if you took the test when it was first offered (this prevents unprepared students from having an advantage over students who were ready for the test) or 2) you missed the test because of circumstances beyond your control, as discussed below.

If you miss, or know you are going ot miss, a lab exam, contact the instructor; if you miss the test because of circumstances truly beyond your control, the instructor will give you permission to take a retake of the same exam; you must so by the date specified to have the retake considered as if it were the first offering of the missed exam. If you take the exam after the specified time, it will not be scored (and thus it will not count as a substitute for your initial exam).

Because of past attempts by students to “game the system,” you will not be credited with having taken a lab exam unless it contains code you wrote that makes a legitimate attempt to complete the exam’s missing sections correctly. In particular, if you were at the exam but did not turn in an exam folder, turned in one that is blank, or turned in one that has no code of your own, we will treat it as if you had not taken the test. (If an exam contains code you did not (help) write, and you did not have our explicit permission to use it, that is academic dishonesty.)

Such exams are notated with a “--”. When computing your total grade, this exam will be treated as a test not passed.

If you receive a “--” on an exam, you may petition the instructor to change the score to an NP. Such a petition will be granted if circumstances beyond your control led to the situation that caused the “--” notation to be recorded.

You may retake a lab exam (subject to the above policies) during the scheduled retake times. Retake offerings will begin after the first lab exam and continue into Finals Week. The scheduled times are posted on the ICS 21 Course Web page.