Mastery Quizzes

Objective

Mastery Quizzes (MQs) in this course are intended as a formative assessment: a way to measure your mastery of key concepts and to provide feedback while you still have time to improve. Each quiz asks if you can solve a certain kind of problem, using certain kinds of programming tools. The initial MQ on each concept will be taken in class.

Evaluation

Mastery quizzes are evaluated on the following scale.

• Mastery Demonstrated (MD): a clear solution is presented with no conceptual errors. Syntax errors, off-by-one-errors, and similar minor mistakes are not required nor evaluated.

• Master Conditional On Revision (MC): - clear solution is presented with one or more small errors: mismanaged types, missing cases, or employing programming techniques other than the one being evaluated. After recieving an MC score, you may submit a revised solution that works through the error. The score will be revised to MD upon correction.

• Master Not Demonstrated (ND): the solution does not demonstrate mastery of the required concepts, for instance by having a conceptual error, misunderstanding the question asked, or uses code that would have to be completely rewritten to function.

Iteration

You should prepare ahead of time and make every effort to achieve a MD mark on a quiz. However, mistakes are a key part of learning, and a  purpose of the quiz is to help you realize when you don't understand a concept. For this reason, after receiving a mark of ND, you can re-attempt a mastery quiz after additional preparation.

• • A re-attempt can be made by expending a token during office hours, or another scheduled time.

  • Each student begins the semester with 8 tokens for MQ re-attempts.

  • Before taking a second (or further) re-attempt quiz for the same topic, you are required to attend office hours to discuss the concept and mistake.

  • Exams provide additional opportunities to demonstrate mastery on MQ topics without using a token - correctly solving an exam problem covering the associated topic will count as having received an MD grade on a quiz. 

  • Re-attempts must be taken in the order shown by the following diagram. You must achieve an MD score on all MQs leading to the one you are are-attempting.

  • MQ2, MQ3, MW4, and MQ5 represent the minimum marks required to pass this course. You must master these four to pass the course.