Rules and Grading

Grading

To pass this course you need to obtain 5 points from a total of 10 points: You need a minimum of 2.5 points from the semester (midterm exam, assignments, laboratory sessions and lecture quizzes) in order to be able to take the final exam.

Final Exam

The final exam is worth 5 points. You can only participate in one exam in an exam session. The final exam is a practical exam. You will solve the exam using your own personal laptops. The final exam takes 120 minutes.

The final exam is open-book. You can use the internet and any form of non-collabotarive resource. Any attempts to use a collaborative resource (WhatsApp, Google Docs, Teams, etc.) or tools like ChatGPT, Copilot (or other LLMs) is considered plagiarism.

Phones are prohibited during the exam. You will need an ID (student card, national ID, etc.) in order to participate in the exam.

Midterm Exam

The midterm exam is worth 2 points. The midterm exam will take place on Saturday, May 10th.

The midterm exam is a practical exam, identical with the final exam in term of rules.

You will be assigned an interval in which you will participate in the exam. The midterm exam takes 60 minutes and will test knowledge acquired from the first eight labs (up to the Functions one).

Assignments

Assignments are worth 2 points of the final grade. There are 3 assignments, graded as follows:

  1. Assignment 1: 0.50p (24.03 - 06.04.2025)
  2. Assignment 2: 0.75p (14.04 - 04.05.2025)
  3. Assignment 3: 0.75p (05.05 - 25.05.2025)

Each assignment has a single deadline. Once the deadline passes (soft deadline), the assignment can be submitted with a penalty of 2 points out of 10 per day for the next 5 days (hard deadline).

Assignments will be subject to plagiarism detection and penalties.

Laboratory Sessions

Laboratory sessions take part in person in the lab rooms assigned according to the schedule. Student groups are divided in half (into two equally-sized subgroups or with a maximum difference of one student). The maximum number of students in a lab slot is 16. Starting from the third week, the attendance list for the laboratory becomes fixed.

Lecture Quizzes

There will be 4 lecture quizzes, worth a total of 0.5 points. These will be conducted online on the Moodle platform and will be available for one day (closing at 11:55 PM on the announced date).

Each assessment will contain 5 questions, and the allocated time to complete it is 10 minutes. Each question will have an arbitrary number of answer choices, with only one correct answer.

The schedule for the course assessments is described below:

  • Course Assessment 1 will take place on March 18, 2025 and will cover chapters 1-3 (Programs and the Computing System, Program Investigation and Construction, Computer System Architecture).
  • Course Assessment 2 will take place on April 8, 2025 and will cover chapter 4-5 (Number Representation, x86 Hardware-Software Interface).
  • Course Assessment 3 will take place on April 29, 2025 and will cover chapters 6-7 (Stack, Functions).
  • Course Assessment 4 will take place on May 20, 2025 and will cover chapters 8-9 (Application Binary Interface, Buffer Overflow).

Rules

Checking Assignments

Assignments will be automatically checked using public tests. There are no private tests. Assignments will be checked automatically using Moodle and GitLab.

Solving Assignments

Assignments are individual. Each assignment should be completed by a student without consulting the source code of their peers.

If you encounter any problems in solving an assignment, please use the forum dedicated to that assignment. You can discuss among yourselves within the bounds of common sense; in other words, you don’t have to dictate the solution to someone, but you can provide a general idea. It is not allowed to request the solution to an assignment on sites like StackExchange or others. You can ask more general questions, but do not request the assignment solution.

You can use code from labs and skeletons provided by us without any issues. You can use external resources (GitHub, open-source code, or others) as long as they do not represent obvious assignment solutions, publicly posted with or without intent. See the next paragraph for clarification.

It is not allowed to publish assignment solutions (even after the course has ended). If you find public assignment solutions on GitHub or elsewhere, do not consult them, as this could lead to plagiarism and loss of points on assignments. We reiterate that if you need clarification, please use the forums provided for each assignment.

It is not allowed to transfer files among yourselves. In general, we recommend not sharing screens with other classmates, either for inspiration or to help them with a solution. Avoid testing an assignment on a classmate’s system. There can be exceptions, such as assisting someone with troubleshooting, but please be mindful not to transition from “let’s figure out the problem” to “let me solve your assignment.” We recommend using the dedicated forum for each assignment to ask questions (or any other channel provided to you).

Plagiarism Penalties

Generally, we consider punitive measures to be the last resort. As long as an assignment is completed individually without problematic source code contributions from external sources, it is not considered a copied assignment.

The concept of plagiarized assignments includes, but is not limited to, situations such as:

  • Two assignments that bear sufficient resemblance to draw this conclusion.
  • Using source code from the internet that is clearly the solution to the assignment.
  • Utilizing portions of another classmate’s code.
  • Accessing another classmate’s code during the assignment.
  • Modifying an existing assignment.
  • Tracing another classmate’s code.
  • Direct assistance in completing the assignment (someone else wrote or dictated the code).
  • Someone else completes the assignment (willingly, for payment, or other benefits).

In the event that two assignments are deemed plagiarized, both the source and destination will receive identical penalties, without discussions regarding who copied from whom and whose fault it is. Both the source and the destination will be given minus half of the assignment points (e.g., if the assignment is worth 1p, the plagiarised assignments will be given -0.5p).

Laboratory

Laboratory sessions take part in person in the lab rooms assigned according to the schedule. Student groups are divided in half (into two equally-sized subgroups or with a maximum difference of one student). The maximum number of students in a lab slot is 16. Starting from the third week, the attendance list for the laboratory becomes fixed.

Transfers between subgroups are only allowed in objective situations. Reasons such as “I’m employed,” “I have classes for another course,” or “the schedule suits me better” are not considered. If you have an objective situation, you can request a transfer between subgroups by sending an email to Stefan Jumarea with the subject [PCLP2][Transfer Request] NAME Surname - Group, in which you describe the situation. You will be informed if the transfer is accepted.