FAQ
Here is where you can find the answers to many of the most commonly asked questions in this course!
Finding Resources
- Where can I find the FAQ?
- When are office hours?
- When are assignments and modules due?
- Oh no, I'm sick! What should I do?
- Can I work with my friend on quizzes, or assignment questions?
- EdX is telling me that my coding problem answer is incorrect, and I don't know why.
- I tested my concept check or quiz code and tried it like fifty times, but edX is still telling me it's wrong. Is there a problem with edX?
- My answer looks the same but edX/MarkUs still is marking me wrong. Why?
- Where are the solutions to the programming concept check problems or the programming quiz problems?
- I wasn't able to complete my assignment on time. Can I get a short extension?
- Where can I find information about the instructional support coordinator?
- I submitted an assignment question just after the deadline. Can it still be graded?
- I believe there is an error in grading my assignment. Can I get a remark?
- Can I use the built-in function function-name in the assignment?
- Do I have to handle illegal inputs in my function?
- Can I use code from the course in assignments?
- Will the Final Exam be in person?
- Where can I find even more practice problems?
This is the FAQ.
Go to Course > Syllabus and Course Information > Course Information > Office Hours.
Go to Course > Syllabus and Course Information > Course Information > Course Schedule.
Getting Work Done
Rest up and get well soon! In the meantime, please fill out a verification of illness form on Quest. We will most likely excuse you from the part of the course you missed. Contact the Instructional Support Coordinator if you have more questions.
You are welcome to study with friends and discuss material from the lessons. If a friend is stuck on a question, you can give them ideas to help them get unstuck. It's even okay to discuss approaches for solving specific questions, as long as you don't get too specific. In particular, don't copy someone else's code, don't post your assignment anywhere, don't share your assignment with anyone and most importantly, don't share your code with anybody. If you copy code, we'll find out, and you will be penalized severely.
Concept Checks
If you can't solve a coding problem on the first try, you are strongly advised to first start writing some proper tests using the check module. Students that don't test using the check module (say by using print statements) can also interfere with the automated testing suite. Not to mention, without seeing properly written tests, we cannot tell where your misunderstandings are. Please test properly.
You almost certainly didn't test thoroughly enough. Our tests are very thorough, and we're testing your function with an input that's legal according to the question, but that you didn't take into account. Once you've written a good testing suite (remember quality is more important than quantity) beyond the given examples and you're still stuck, then feel free to ask on the forums or visit office hours where we can help you debug and come up with other interesting tests. It is extremely important to practice the skill of writing good testing suites and we will enforce this before giving additional help to students.
This is often a problem when students do not test with the check module. If you did test properly and you still can't find the error, think about whitespace characters such as spaces or newline characters.
We don't make any solutions available for programming problems in concept checks and quizzes. But we are happy to go over them with you in office hours or on the discussion forums.
Assignments
We don't give individual extensions in this course, for any deadline, for any reason, under any circumstances. We collect assessments and run autograding scripts exactly at the deadline time and we cannot do this on an individual basis. However, we will sometimes excuse you from the deadline, and redistribute the weight of the component you missed to the rest of the course. If you miss a deadline for reasons outside of your control, please contact our instructional support coordinator (not your individual instructor).
Go to Course > Syllabus and Course Information > Course Information > Course Staff and Contact Information.
The assignment deadlines are firm. Give yourself a buffer of a few hours for submitting the final version of your assignment, not a few seconds. Submit early and often, so that if you miss the final deadline there will still be a partial solution uploaded to MarkUs.
First you are strongly advised to read the posted solutions first.
Go to Course > Syllabus and Course Information > Course Information > Assignment Solutions.
If after reading the solutions you still feel you are correct, submit a formal remark request.
Go to Course > Syllabus and Course Information > Course Information > Assignment Regrade Request.
On the general instructions page for each individual assignment, you'll find a section titled "Restrictions". The section tells you which Python features you're allowed to use.
You don't have to worry about values that don't conform to the assignment specification.
Yes! This is in fact encouraged. Just please cite your source in a comment. The citation format isn't predescribed so just be reasonable so we can look up where you got the code if need be. This also works in the other direction as well (using assignment code in concept checks).
The Final Exam
Yes. Oh and since you're reading, blue is the answer to the question in the first module.
Some time after Module 10 is released, an additional `Final Exam Information' section will also be released which will have any and all additional problems we are willing to post. You can also find good instructions about how to prepare for your exam there.