Oral exams

CSCI 1260 has midterm and final oral examinations. These will be short (~10-minute) conversations between Doug and the students, conducted over Zoom. There will be two types of questions:

Drill questions
Doug will ask you for the answer to a specific previous drill question, and to explain why that answer is correct.
Homework questions
Doug will ask you to talk through a specific part of your implementation of a previous homework assignment.

For both types of questions, Doug will share his screen (showing either the drill question or your homework solution). Don’t access any other resources during the exam (i.e., the Zoom window should be maximized and you shouldn’t have notes with you).

There will be three total questions, at least one of which will be a drill question and at least one of which will be a homework question.

Drill questions will be graded on the following scale:

Check-plus
Answer demonstrates a complete and correct understanding of the question.
Check
Answer demonstrates OK understanding of the question, with one or more minor errors.
Check-minus
Answer demonstrates some understanding of the question, with one or more major errors
No check
Answer demonstrates no understanding of the question

Homework questions will be graded on the following scale:

Check-plus
Answer demonstrates complete and correct understanding of what the code should be doing and how it does it. It’s fine if your implementation is incorrect as long as you can explain what it’s trying to do.
Check
Answer demonstrates OK understanding, with one or more minor errors about either what the code should be doing or how it does it
Check-minus
Answer demonstrates some understanding, with one or more major errors
No check
Answer demonstrates no understanding of what the code should be doing or how it does it

An example of a homework question: “Here’s your solution to homework 2. How does your compiler implement the char? operation, which checks to see if a value is a character?”

You will not be asked to explain your implementation on a homework problem you didn’t implement (Doug will look at your solution before the exam).

Each check-plus is worth 100 points, each check is worth 75 points, and each check-minus is worth 50 points. We’ll add these points up and divide by 300 to get your total score.