CS110 assessments are intended to gauge your comfort and facility with the course material. Since the course topics build on each other, confirming you have a solid grasp of the foundational material periodically ensures you're equipped to tackle the later concepts to come in the course.
We provide the assessments as a tool to take stock of where you're at and see how much you've learned, as well as what work you have left to do. Each assessment also contributes a small but meaningful contribution to your course grade.
Time: Tue. 03/15 8:30AM PDT - 11:30AM PDT.
Format: Pencil and paper, closed book, closed notes, closed computer. We will provide you with a list of all function prototypes and class definitions we feel might be relevant while completing the assessment. If while taking the assessment you feel you need to use a class or function we've not included, you can just ask us what the prototypes are and we'll supply them.
Location: Rooms 420-040 (for students whose SUNet IDs begin with a through n) and 420-041 (for students whose SUNet IDs begin with o through z.)
Material Covered: Everything, with the exception of MapReduce, which will not be covered on the final assessment. The final will be cumulative, though it will bias toward material not covered on prior assessments.
Practice Materials: Click here!
You should expect your own assessment to be a combination of coding and short answer questions.Assessment Window: Sun. 02/13 5:00pm PDT - Tue. 02/15 5:00pm PDT.
Material Covered: through multiprocessing (everything through the end of Lecture 12, Assignments 4, and Lab 4 [minus the one threading problem involving quicksort]).
Practice Materials: click here for a compilation of multiprocessing questions from previous CS110 midterm and final exams. We highly recommend revisiting the section and assignment material as you prepare. The textbooks may also contain exercises if you want additional problems to work. For this assessment, we may ask questions where you write code. See the practice problems for examples of what types of coding questions we may ask.
Assessment Window: Sun. 01/23 5:00pm PDT - Tue. 01/25 5:00pm PDT.
Material Covered: through filesystems (first half of Lecture 5 slide deck, up through and including filesystem data structures, but no multiprocessing), including lab1 and assign2. Excludes material from assign1 such as C++ lambdas.
Practice Materials: click here for a compilation of filesystems questions from previous CS110 midterm exams. We highly recommend revisiting the section and assignment material as you prepare. The textbooks may also contain exercises if you want additional problems to work. For this assessment, we will not ask questions where you must write code (though you may be asked code reading/understanding questions), but we included coding practice in case it's helpful.
The two mid-quarter assessments are open-book, open-note, and will be administered via Gradescope. While you are able to access the myth machines during the assessment, the problems will be written with the intent that you not need to use the myth machines to complete them.
Each mid-quarter assessment will have a 48-hour "assessment window" during which all students must complete the assessment. Mid-quarter assessment windows open at 5:00pm on Sundays and close precisely 48 hours later, on Tuesdays at 5:00pm. To be clear, you may start as late as Tuesday at 2:00pm so that you're done by 5:00pm.
We will target each assessment for a completion time of about 1-1.5 hours, but students will be allowed to work up to 3 hours if they so choose. You may choose any three-hour time period that is entirely contained within an assessment window during which to take an assessment. You do not have to communicate your planned schedule to us. Our tools automatically monitor the time you begin and when you submit. Your submission must be received no later than 3 hours after you have started an assessment. Late submissions cannot be accepted.
The final assessment is an in-person, paper, closed-book exam at the date/time/location specified above. We will provide you with a list of all function prototypes and class definitions we feel might be relevant while completing the assessment. If while taking the assessment you feel you need to use a class or function we've not included, you can just ask us what the prototypes are and we'll supply them.
Unlike the assignments, the assessments are strictly individual work. Even course staff assistance will be limited to clarifying questions of the kind that might be allowed on a traditional, in-person exam.
The assessments may be a mix of short answer, multiple choice, code reading, code writing, etc. questions.
If you have questions during a mid-quarter assessment, please ask them as a private question via our discussion forum. Private questions will be re-enabled while self-assessment windows are open. (We won't have office hours during the assessments windows, since we can't review material once the assessment window has opened.). For the final in-person assessment, proctors will be outside the room to answer questions.
If you encounter an issue during a mid-quarter assessment period that prevents you from completing the assessment, please email the course staff immediately so that we can work with you to resolve the issue.
The Honor Code policies are a critical part of the assessments (see the general information handout on the main course homepage) and we expect you to uphold your obligations as for any other coursework. Here are the key principles:
The mid-quarter assessments will be administered on Gradescope the same way concept checks are. The only difference worth mentioning is that you have precisely three hours from the time you open the assessment to complete and submit. The final assessment will be administered with pencil/paper and turned in at the end of the exam period.