Grading

We will follow a flipped classroom model. In other words, you read the material from the textbook, watch video “lectures” and explanations, and take online quizzes at home to assess how much of the reading and preparation you have done. In class, you will work on a deeper understanding of the material via problem solving: the problems will be given to you before class, and it will be your goal to solve them during class!

The at-home online quizzes will account for 15% of your grade. There will be two in-class exams of the traditional variety: one mid-term exam (1.5 hrs; 15% of the grade) and one final exam (2.5 hrs; 30 of the grade). The rest of the marks will come from:

• In-class quizzes; (Flipped) “homework”:

  These will be based on the technical content of the assigned questions and will be online or in written form. This will be worth 30% of the grade. If written submissions are required, you must use LaTeX, a document authoring markup language, and the final form of the document must be in PDF.

• Discussion lead:

  In round-robin fashion, students will lead discussions on assigned topics, which could include the problems for the sessions. The goal will be to dissect each topic and its underlying theory or design/analysis technique. These discussions will be worth 10% of the grade.

• Bonus Problems:

  One or two bonus problems will be assigned per week. Any student who is able to come up - on a first-come, first-serve basis - with a complete and correct formal presentation of the solution to the problem, will get a one-time, 5% bonus towards the final grade.

Letter grades will be based on an absolute scale that I will announce on Sakai in the first week of classes.

Collaboration Policy

Students are encouraged to participate in collaborative discussions in person or on Sakai. However, at no point should the collaboration extend to quizzes or any other online assessment: that must be entirely your own work. Copying (or substantially “borrowing”) from someone else or allowing your work to be copied by others constitutes cheating, as does plagiarism from sources including books and the web. Any confirmed violations will be dealt with immediately and severely as per the Rutgers Academic Integrity Policy and Student Code of Conduct.