CSE 6040 Exam Rules FAQ - FA22

FAQ

The information on the Exam Guide page takes precedence, but should align with all of the information below. If you see any inconsistences please make a private piazza post and the staff will directly address it.

1. How do exams work? - Review the Exam Guide page, course syllabus, and exam release notes (posted in piazza at the start of the exam period)
2. When does the exam open? - Check the course schedule. Exams will release on the date listed at 1200 UTC. UTC is a 24-hour time. The current UTC timestamp is given on this page.
3. Can I take the exam earlier/later? - No, sorry. We are usually developing and testing the exam right until the release date. On the tail end, we need to close the exam and get solutions out to students. If there are circumstances that will result in you being unable to take the test, then you will need to make a private piazza post to discuss this with the TA's ahead of time. It's a lot easier to resolve ahead of time rather than after.
4. You said the exam time limit is X number of hours but the course schedule says it's open for 5 days - You have X number of hours to complete the exam once you open it, or until the exam window closes, whichever comes first. That means if you start the exam at 1150 UTC on the final date, you will have only 10 minutes to complete it.
5. Is there a "best time" to take the exam when TA's will be around? - TA's will not be able to assist you with the exam other than for technical issues. That being said, TA's will normally be around during US East Coast daytime hours (probably 9am - 9pm ET). You are definitely welcome to take the exam outside of those hours. Any issues encountered when a TA isn't around at that second will be resolved when TA's come on duty (as long as you followed the proper procedure from the 'Support' section of the Exam Guide)
6. When/where will my grade be posted? - Vocareum is the source of truth. If you have submitted and see the points accumulated in the "Grades" pane on the right-hand side of the screen then we have it. The finalized scores will be available on your LMS (Canvas for OMSA students and edX for VMM students) after the exam window has closed. They may show up sooner. If you see a lower score on your LMS than you saw in Vocareum, it will get updated.
7. How many times can I submit my exam? - As many times as you want to. We recommend that you SUBMIT AFTER COMPLETING EACH EXERCISE! There is no excuse for not doing this.
8. What if my code passes in the notebook but fails when I submit? - Your solution must pass the autograder to earn credit. If you encounter this situation do the following (1) Check the grading report. It is possible that your solution timed out or crashed the grading script. If that is the case you will not receive credit. If you have been submitting after each exercise, it should be easy to isolate the cell causing the issue. (2) Restart your kernel and run the notebook from the top. It is possible that a name got defined or imported below where it is used, leading to a solution passing in your workarea but failing the autograder due to the order in which the cells were run.
9. How do I show my room to the proctoring software? - Either rotate the camera or use a mirror.
10. What if I need help during the exam? - See the Support section above. Do not make any public posts discussing exam material in any way! Doing so will be considered a violation of the Honor Code.
11. How are exams graded - Exactly like the homework notebooks. You submit your work to the autograder, and it gives back a score. The autograder is the final arbiter of credit. We will not manually grade your work. If you choose to work outside of Vocareum it is your responsibility to get your code to work in Vocareum and submit it.
12. How do I use a local IDE for the exam? - You are welcome to work locally but we don't officially support it and will not be able to help you. On top of spending time getting everything downloaded and arragned properly, there may be differences in packages and configurations that will result in things running differently than in Vocareum. Your code must run and pass the autograder in Vocareum, there will not be exceptions made because "it ran locally". We do not recommend this during exams. The benefits a local IDE's may provide are probably not worth it unless you are highly confident in your ability to undertake this process.
13. What is meant by "open-book, open-note, open-internet?" - You can look at any physical book, any physical or digital notes you have taken, all of the course materials, and anything on the internet. The only exceptions are you may not communicate with another person to seek help (no posting to online forums, IM software, screen-share, etc) and you may not view any solutions which may have been posted online (students have posted exam questions to these services and tried to view the posted solutions. Both behaviors are Honor Code violations.) See the Exam Guide page under Honor Code violations and Exam Rules.
14. Can we see old exams? Yes. These will be posted as practice problems after all of the relavent material for the exam has been released.
15. What is allowed during the exam? Please check the rules list on the Exam Guide page
16. What happens if I cause a flag in the proctoring software? - There are many allowed behaviors which may cause proctoring flags (leaving the camera's view, noise from family/pets/etc, looking at physical notes). We will review them, but unless there is evidence that you are communicating with another person about the exam or viewing solutions we will not raise a violation. Despite the horror stories about online proctoring which you may have heard, we have been using these services for several years without any "false positives".
17. I saw someone discussing the test (format, questions, solutions): You will not be penalized for stumbling upon anything, but you should report it to the teaching staff in a private piazza post. Please provide screenshots as well. We don't want anyone to have an unfair advantage and will take all reports seriously.
18. I have an urgent question, can I reach out to the staff via Canvas, Email, Linkedin, Personal Email, Facebook, or any non-Piazza platform? No, Piazza is the only platform we monitor, and it's also the best one. Please make sure your private posts have 'instructors' listed as people that can view it, not specific ones only.