We strongly encourage all students to participate actively in all learning activities. Regular engagement is crucial for your success in this unit, as these activities provide opportunities to deepen your understanding of the material, collaborate with peers, and receive valuable feedback from instructors to assist in completing the unit assessments. Your active participation enhances your learning experience and contributes to a vibrant and dynamic learning environment for everyone.

Requirements to Pass this Unit

To pass this unit, you must:

• Achieve a total mark equal to or greater than 50%

There are no hurdle requirements for the unit.

Assessment Information

Database Design Project

This is an individual assignment to be submitted on iLearn by the due date.

Skill Exercise

This is an individual assessment held on campus and invigilated during the practical class for which you are registered.

Final Exam

This is an individual formal examination that will be conducted on campus and invigilated. The time and place will be published on https://iexams.mq.edu.au/ closer to the date.

Release Dates

• Database Design Project: specifications to be released no later than week 3
• Skill Exercise: information and sample questions are to be released no later than week 8
• Final Exam: information and sample questions are to be released no later than week 12

Submission of assessable work

For all your assignments and your professional life in the future, you are encouraged to:

• Set your personal deadline earlier than the official deadline
• Keep backups of all your important files
• Ensure that no one else has access to your files or documents

Assessments where Late Submissions and/or Short Extension will be accepted

• Database Design Project – YES, Standard Late Penalty applies without an extension
• Skills Exercise - NO, unless Special Consideration is Granted
• Final Exam - NO, unless Special Consideration is Granted

Short Extensions

For some assessment types, students are allowed to request (before the due date) an extra 3 calendar days to complete eligible assessments. No reason or evidence is required. This only applies to individual assessments with the Short Extension flag is marked as ‘Yes’. Please submit a Short Extension request through https://connect.mq.edu.au. For more information on Short Extensions, refer to https://students.mq.edu.au/study/assessment-exams/assessments/short-extensions.

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 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 submit a Special Consideration request through https://connect.mq.edu.au.

Late Submission Policy

If you have no extensions or have submitted after the new extension date,

• 5% penalty per day: If you submit your assessment late, 5% of the total possible marks will be deducted for each day (including weekends), up to 7 days.

  • Example 1 (out of 100): If you score 85/100 but submit 20 hours late, you will lose 5 marks and receive 80/100.

  • Example 2 (out of 30): If you score 27/30 but submit 1 day late, you will lose 1.5 marks and receive 25.5/30.

• After 7 days: Submissions more than 7 days late will receive a mark of 0.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

Invigilated assessments have been designed with universal design strategies in mind, which may remove the need for individual reasonable adjustments. All students will have up to 50% extra time to complete these assessments. This extra time has been applied to all students.

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

Each week, you should engage and participate in:

• a two-hour lecture
• a two-hour practical

For details of days, times and rooms, consult your personal timetable on eStudent. For details of scheduled classes, consult the Classfinder tool on eStudent.

Week 1 Classes

Note that both the lecture and practical classes commence in week 1. 

Please attend the practical class for which you are registered on eStudent.

Methods of Communication

We will communicate with you via your university email and through announcements on iLearn.

For queries:

• General queries that can be answered by either your classmates or the teaching staff can be placed on the iLearn general discussion forum.
• Private and other queries can be sent to the core teaching staff via the unit email: comp1350@mq.edu.au

Texts and Materials

Notes are available each week on iLearn, but they are intended as an outline of the lecture only and are not a substitute for your own notes or reading of any textbook or other additional material.

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 on the iLearn page.

The Database Design Project is now an individual assessment based on the feedback from students regarding the difficulties in managing group work. We would still encourage teamwork in class, but each student would now be responsible for their own project workings and submission.