Lab Logistics and Grading
- Attendance and participation in labs is required. "Attendance" means that you come at the beginning of your scheduled lab period and work on the lab material until either you finish the checkpoints or the period ends.
- Each lab is like a self-paced tutorial or sometimes a group activity with things for you to do. There are occasional
"checkpoints" which are tasks you have to show or explain to the TA. This is how we grade your participation in lab.
- At the beginning of each lab period, you can find the lab writeup through the links
on Piazza and start reading it. The TA will normally go over the new lab and help
everyone get started as necessary.
- If you finish early, you can take off, or stick around to help other people out and chat with the TA.
Grading of lab work
- Lab scores count for roughly 10% of your final grade (so an individual lab counts for only about 1%). However, doing the labs is strongly correlated with higher scores on exams and homework, so that should be an even better motivation!
- If you do not attend your scheduled lab period for any reason, you get a zero for that lab. You do not need to provide excuses of any kind, we do not want them.
- There will probably be 10 labs altogether, and you can miss two of them without penalty (i.e., we will drop your lowest two scores). You can get the flu, oversleep, travel with the ROTC, perform in a play, or attend a family reunion. Choose wisely.
- If you have an extended illness or other unusual circumstances requiring you to miss classes for several weeks, please discuss the situation with your professor.
- If you aren't able to finish the checkpoints within the lab period, you have 6 days to finish it on your own. You can meet
with any TA during office hours to have your checkpoints recorded or get additional help.
Late checkpoints will not be recorded more than 6 days after your lab period.
The deadline is the last TA office hour prior to the 7th day.
Checkpoints will normally NOT be reviewed by email.
- Checkpoints will not be recorded if you did not attend the lab in the first place.
Working together
In lab, we encourage you to collaborate and talk about things
with the TA and the people around you, as long as you eventually complete the checkpoints yourself.
If you are finishing checkpoints outside of the lab period, collaboration is NOT allowed (of course, you can meet with any of the TAs during office hours for help).
Working ahead
If you prefer to start the lab ahead of time on your own, and if the lab does not specifically require working in a group, then that is fine! The lab writeup will normally be posted sometime on Wednesday. Just remember that the attendance rule still applies: you need to come at the beginning of your scheduled lab period to have the checkpoints reviewed by your TA in order to get credit for it.