Assessment Tasks

Assignment 1 and 2 are both due by 11:55pm on the date specified in the assessment table.

A one hour technical time window is allowed for issues uploading - no penalty applied, no extra application required.

There is a "Short extension" available for Assignment 1 and Assiognment 2. For details on how this mechanism works, please refer to https://students.mq.edu.au/study/assessment-exams/assessments/short-extensions. 

Indicative time-on-task is an estimate of the time required for completion of the assessment task and is subject to individual variation.

Requirements to Pass this Unit

The final mark for the unit will be calculated by combining the marks for all assessment tasks according to the percentage weightings shown in the assessment summary.

To pass this unit you must achieve a final mark equal to or greater than 50% based on the assessment tasks summary. There is no hurdle.

Students are expected to attend classes and engage in all learning activities even though there are no marks or hurdles attached to such things.

Release

Assignment 1 should be available by the end of week 3 (Sunday 16 August).

Assignment 2 should be available by the end of week 7 (Sunday 13 September).

Late Assessment Submission Penalty 

Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, a 5% penalty (of the total possible mark of the task) will be applied for each day a written report or presentation assessment is not submitted, up until the 7th day (including weekends).

After the 7th day, a grade of ‘0’ will be awarded even if the assessment is submitted. The submission time for all uploaded assessments is 11:55 pm. A 1-hour grace period will be provided to students who experience technical concerns. For any late submission of time-sensitive tasks, such as scheduled tests/exams, performance assessments/presentations, and/or scheduled practical assessments/labs, please apply for Special Consideration.

Example calculation: 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 according to the late submission policy above:

• Assignment 1
• Assignment 2

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

AI Approach

• Open These assessments do not restrict the application of AI tools. However, it is expected that the use of AI is acknowledged in an appropriate manner, similar to the expectation to provide references for other resources or tools that are used in producing your work. Any use of AI should comply with the University’s Responsible and Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence Policy.
• Observed These tasks are either fully or partly observed or invigilated. AI use will either not be permitted or will be restricted during the assessment.

For more information, please see https://students.mq.edu.au/study/assessment-exams/assessments/ai-and-assessment

Classes

Check your eStudent enrollment for times and locations of your selected classes. You are expected to enrol in the 2-hour lecture and also a 2-hour practical class for each week.

• Lectures: (starting week 1)
  • These are intended as interactive delivery, not as one-way communication. Please attend live in person or live via ECHO360.

• Practical Classes: (starting week 2, covering the previous week's lecture concepts)
  • Held in 4RPD room 102 (a non-computer-lab room). Please bring your own device / notebook / writing paper, and also a strategy for taking notes / drawing as needed.
  • Questions and activities provided each week in iLearn.
  • The intent of these practical classes is to dive in and explore different strategies and problems each week. There will also be some group challenges on occasion in the classes to help explore different approaches and outcomes.
  • The practical class also gives you a chance to discuss any course-related problem you may have. These problems can b discussed with the practical staff and your peers.

It is important that you keep up with the problems in your practical classes as wella s any "follow-up tasks" as doing so will help you understand the material in the unit and prepare you for your assessments and demonstrating the unit learning outcomes. 

Methods of Communication

Our primary means of communication will be through the unit forums in the COMP3010 iLearn page. We may also send communicaions to your student emial. You are expectd to check both avenues of communication regularly.

The teaching staff will not entertain emails that do not originate from university email IDs. Additionally, significant announcements will be posted on iLearn, a centralised platform for accessing vital details about the course. Should you have any queries or require assistance from the teaching staff, including the unit convenor, you have two communication channels.

• Firstly, you can post your queries on the iLearn discussion board, providing an interactive space for instructors and peers to engage in discussions.
• Alternatively, you may send emails to the corresponding addresses of the teaching staff using your university email address for official communication.

Through these communication methods, we aim to ensure effective and timely dissemination of information and provide the necessary support throughout the course. We aim to have communications returned next business day. So if a message is sent to us on a Friday 4pm, it may not receive a reply until some time on the following Monday.

Resources

The following textbooks are not required for COMP3010, but are highly recommended as we will use them as the basis for most of the course. Both textbooks are available online via the library website.

• (CLRS) T. H. Cormen, C. E. Leiserson, R. L. Rivest, & C. Stein, Introduction to Algorithms (MIT Press) 3rd edition. ISBN 0-262-53305-7. 
• (Skiena) S. S. Skiena, The Algorithm Design Manual, Springer, 2nd edition, 2008, ISBN: 978-1-84800-069-8

Technology

The coding component for this course will be presented using the Java programming language as the recommended development environment. You may be expected to use git version control repositoris, docker, and/or a cloud-based repository hosting platform for parts of the course. We may provide extra scaffolding for test automation / correctness checking, but should not require any paid software to do so.

Tentative lecture schedule for COMP3010 is as follows:

1. Introduction and Complexity Analysis
2. Algorithm Correctness
3. Asymptotic Notations
4. Greedy Algorithms
5. Divide & Conquer
6. Dynamic Programming
7. Probabilistic Algorithms
8. String algorithms 
9. Graph Algorithms
10. Graph Algorithms (continued)
11. Continuing with graph algorithms
12. Reduction and comparing the hardness of problems
13. Revision

Note: There is a 2-week mid-session teaching break in between week 8 and week 9.

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. The classes have been moved out of the computer labs to help foster a more collaborative and interactive discourse in the practical classes.