CS46A/B Lab Rules

  1. The lab is a required part of your course. If you fail the lab, you will fail the course.
  2. You must be present in the lab at the scheduled time. You must arrive at the scheduled time and stay until the lab instructor dismisses the lab. Sign in and out in order to get credit for the lab.
  3. You can't make up a lab. You won't pass the class if you miss more than 3 labs.
  4. You bring your own laptop with at least 2GB of RAM (4GB if you run Windows). Supported operating systems are Windows 7 or newer, Mac OS X Lion or newer, and Lubuntu 12.10. Windows users will need to use a Linux virtual machine for some labs. Installation instructions are here.
  5. You work in pairs. (There will be one group of three if there is an odd number of students in the lab. Such an odd group has one driver and two scribes, each of whom writes up the answers in their own words. Nobody can be in a group of three for two weeks in a row.)
  6. If your lab partner is absent, you must contact the lab instructor and ask to be paired up with someone else. You receive no credit for a lab on which you work alone.
  7. If you are late and your lab partner has already been assigned to work with someone else, you must wait until the lab instructor assigns you a temporary partner. If you are lucky, someone else is late too and you get to work with that person. If not, you won't get points for today's lab and it will count as one of your three allowed misses.
    1. In addition, 1 point will be deducted from  your score for the day
  8. You and your lab partner switch roles each week. One week you are the scribe, submitting answers to the questions; the next week, you are the driver, writing code and submitting the code and program output. You lose a point if you don't alternate between driver and scribe in a given week. If you lose too many points this way, you will fail the lab and the class.
  9. The lab instructor assigns the lab partners. Initial assignments are random, but as the class progresses, the lab instructor will attempt to match partners with similar skill levels. You can confidentially request that your lab partner be changed, and a new one will be assigned to you.
  10. Do not attempt to work with a self-chosen partner. You will not receive credit for a lab in which you work with a partner that was not assigned to you.
  11. You should attempt to complete each lab, but you are not required to do so if you run out of time. You get full credit for an attempt, provided you turn in your report. You need not finish the work on your own time, but of course it would be a good idea if you did.
  12. You must upload in your reports to the learning management system before you leave the room.
  13. You will not get  points for reports that are excessively sloppy or that don't follow the lab rules.
  14. If you and your partner are stuck, ask the lab instructor for help.
  15. Don't ask the lab instructor about the homework. The lab is not a general tutoring facility.

Lab scoring