Requirements to Pass the Unit

To pass this unit, you must have:

• An overall mark of 50% or higher in the unit, AND,
• A mark of 50% or higher in practical exam 2.

 

Assignments (10% + 10%)

Assignments are due at 11:55pm on the Sunday (end of the week) stated in the unit guide. The programming assignments requires students to solve a real-life problem based on the contents covered during the semester. Submission of assignments will be done using the iLearn submission box.

 

Quizzes (20%)

2 quizzes over the course of 13 weeks. These quizzes will be taken during your registered practical class. Exact weeks can be found in the assessment tasks table.

 

Practical Exam 1 (20%)

In-class practical exam assessing contents covered during the first half of semester. This will be taken in self enrolled exam sessions during the Teaching Recess. Exact sessions dates and details on how to enrol will be released via iLearn. You will have one attempt in the first week of the teaching recess and one attempt in the second week of the teaching reccess. Your second attempt will be capped at 84 marks. 

 

Practical Exam 2 (40%)

In-class practical exam assessing contents during the entire semester. This will be taken during your registered practical class. Practical Exam 2 is a hurdle assessment, more information about the hurdle requirement for Practical Exam 2 is provided in the HURDLE section.

 

Release Dates

The latest dates the assignment will be released by are listed below:

• Assignment 1 - To be released no later than Sunday 11:55pm Week 6
• Assignment 2 - To be released no later than Sunday 11:55pm Week 11

 

HURDLE

Practical Exam 2 is a hurdle task. You must make a serious attempt at this assessment. A serious attempt is considered an attempt where you have either completed all questions, or tried to complete as much of the exam as possible. This assessment is a hurdle assessment as it is the only assessment where we assess all topics during the session. There are two attempts at the hurdle assessment and the best mark of two attempts will be used. The second attempt is capped at 84 marks. One attempt will be in the week 12 practical class and the other attempt in the week 13 practical class. You must get at least 50% in practical exam 2 to clear this hurdle. If your total mark in the unit is 50 or more but you do not pass practical exam 2, your final unit mark will be capped at 49, and your grade will be FH.

 

Late Assessment Submission Penalty 

Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, a 5% penalty (of the total possible mark of the tast) will be applied each day a written assessment is not submitted, up until the 7^th day (including weekends). After the 7^th day, a grade of '0' will be awarded even if the assessment is submitted. Submission time for all written assessments is set at 11:55 pm. A 1-hour grace period is provided to students who experience a technical concern. 

For any late submission of time-sensitive tasks, such as scheduled tests/exams, performance assessments/presentations, and/or scheduled practical assessments/labs, students need to submit an application for Special Consideration.  

For example, if the assignment is worth 8 marks (of the entire unit) and your submission is late by 19 hours (or 23 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds), 0.4 marks (5% of 8 marks) will be deducted. If your submission is late by 24 hours (or 47 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds), 0.8 marks (10% of 8 marks) will be deducted, and so on. 

Assessments where Late Submissions will be accepted 

In this unit, late submissions will be accepted as follows: 

• In Class (Practical) Quizzes: NO
• In Class (Practical) Exams: NO
• Assignment 1 and 2: YES, Standard Late Penalty applies 

 

Special Consideration

The Special Consideration Policy aims to support students who have been impacted by short-term circumstances or events that are serious, unavoidable and significantly disruptive, and which may affect their performance in assessment. 

Written Assessments: If you experience circumstances or events that affect your ability to complete the written assessments in this unit on time, please inform the convenor and submit a Special Consideration request through http://connect.mq.edu.au/.

Week 1 Classes

Lectures start in week 1.

Practical classes start in week 1.

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Methods of Communication

We will communicate with you via your university email and through announcements on iLearn. Queries to convenors can either be placed on the iLearn discussion board or sent to the unit convenor via the contact email on iLearn.

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Resources

Lecture notes: Check iLearn and also refer to https://softwaretechnologymq.github.io/

Python (3.11.2 at the time of writing this guide): https://python.org/

Visual Studio Code: https://code.visualstudio.com/

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Week	Lecture Topic	Practical Content / Activity
1	Variables + Number Conversions	Problem Solving, Setup
2	Conditions + Strings	Numbers, Datatypes, Conversions, Helper functions
3	Loops	Conditions, Strings
4	Problem Solving 1	Conditions, Loops
5	Functions 1	Loops
6	Functions 2	Functions
7	Problem Solving 2 + Unit testing	Problem Solving
Teaching Recess 1	-	-
Teaching Recess 2	-	-
8	Collections 1	Unit Testing
9	Collections 2	Lists
10	Classes	Dictionaries
11	File System and I/O	Classes
12	Problem Solving	Practical Exam 2 - Attempt
13	Revision	Practical Exam 2 - Attempt

We value student feedback to be able to continually improve the way we offer our units. As such we encourage students to provide constructive feedback via student surveys, to the teaching staff directly, or via the FSE Student Experience & Feedback link in the iLearn page.

Practical Exam 1 now has two attempts with the second attempt capped at 84. Practical Exam 1 will now be taken in self enrolled sessions during the teaching reccess. Practical Exam 2 now has the second attempt capped at 84. Quizzes have been reduced from 4 to 2.