On this page:
✔️ Grading Style
✔️ Succeeding
✔️ Grade Breakdowns
✔️ Relationship between Grades and Assignments

How will I be graded?

Instead of the usual point-based or weighted grading system, we’ll be using mastery-based grading to assess your learning. Mastery-based grading means that:

• As a student, you have full autonomy on how well you do in the course
• As a student, you have full autonomy of the type of work you complete (how you demonstrate your knowledge)
• As a student, you get multiple opportunities to demonstrate your knowledge

Furthermore, we’ll be using an autograder to assess a lot of your submissions for correctness, which means you can submit multiple times and get immediate feedback so you know whether something’s not working.

How do I take the most advantage of this grading scheme?

While confusing at first, you’ll see that this approach has several benefits (outlined above). However, this grading scheme will only benefit you if you understand how to take advantage of all the opportunities it provides you. More specifically, that means:

• Start early and submit often
  • The autograder gives you immediate feedback to let you know whether functionality is incorrect in your code. Use this to find mistake early!

    TLDR: Start early and submit often.

• Keep track of your progress to determine what work you need to prioritize and what you can put on the back-burner
  • With this grading scheme, you don’t necessarily need to complete every assignment in order to get an A or to pass. However, you do need to keep track of your progress with the non-negotiables to ensure you pass the class.

    TLDR: You can skip some assignments and still get an A, BUT if you skip the wrong assignments you won’t pass.

• Resubmit
  • While we cover several topics over the span of a week, it is not expected that you’ll fully understand all of them by the end of that week. A lot of us need more time and practice with any given concept before it ‘clicks’ and we get it. That being said, it’s only fair to actually give you the opportunity to revisit your work and show me you’ve learned more since we last talked about it in class.

    TLDR: You’re allowed (and encouraged!) to resubmit assignments.

What do grades look like?

As has been previously mentioned, there are 20 umbrella topics we’ll be covering, of which 13 are non-negotiable. Your grade for the course will be based on your demonstrated knowledge of the non-negotiable topics.

To receive a D you must:

• Demonstrate understanding in ALL the non-negotiable topics

To receive a C you must:

• Demonstrate understanding in ALL the non-negotiable topics
• Demonstrate competence in AT LEAST 6 of the non-negotiable topics

To receive a B you must:

• Option 1:
  • Demonstrate competence in ALL of the non-negotiable topics
• Option 2:
  • Demonstrate understanding in ALL the non-negotiable topics
  • Demonstrate competence in AT LEAST 6 of the non-negotiable topics
  • Demonstrate mastery in AT LEAST 2 of the non-negotiable topics

To receive an A you must:

• Option 1:
  • Demonstrate competence in ALL the non-negotiable topics
  • Demonstrate mastery in AT LEAST 3 of the non-negotiable topics
• Option 2:
  • Demonstrate understanding in ALL the non-negotiable topics
  • Demonstrate competence in AT LEAST 9 of the non-negotiable topics
  • Demonstrate mastery in AT LEAST 5 of the non-negotiable topics

If you’d like to receive a + designation (B+/C+/D+) you’ll also have to demonstrate some knowledge on the other topics we’ll be covering.

To receive a + designation:

• Option 1:
  • Demonstrate awareness in all 20 topics
• Option 2:
  • Demonstrate mastery in at least 5 topics (any)

How do I demonstrate my knowledge?

There are 6 types of assignments that will allow you to demonstrate your knowledge on all 20 umbrella topics. Here’s an outline of the various ways to demonstrate your level of knowledge (awareness/understanding/competence/mastery):

• Awareness can be demonstrated via:
  • SME Presentations
  • Exams (multiple choice and ranking questions)
• Understanding can be demonstrated via:
  • Wet toes
  • Labs
  • Exams (written responses)
  • Deep dives
• Competence can be demonstrated via:
  • Deep dives
  • Labs
• Mastery can be demonstrated via:
  • Final Project

Please note the following:

• Demonstrating a higher level of knowledge on a topic automatically demonstrates the previous levels (i.e., if you demonstrate understanding, you also demonstrate awareness)
• Technically, the final project is optional
• However, doing a final project is the only way to get an A (or a B if you missed other assignments)
• In theory, you could pass the course by only doing a massive final project that covers all 13 non-negotiables perfectly (not recommended)