Project Grading

After the final deadline for submitting a project, your project will be graded for correctness, design and implementation, and adherence to CMSC 202 coding standards. After all projects are graded, you will recieve an e-mail notification. A grade form will be included in the e-mail. The grade form details the point deductions and penalties for your project.

Note:If you have any questions regarding the grading of your project, you must see your instructor in person within one week of having received your grade.

Once your project is submitted, you should be careful not to change the time and date of any files you submitted (i.e. don’t open them and then save them with an editor). The time and date of your files may be critical in resolving some unusual grading situations.

A project which does not compile will receive a grade of zero.

Correctness — 50 points

Correctness includes the following aspects of your project. The weight assigned to each of these aspects of correctness may be different for each project.

Your project must produce the correct output.

When tested with valid input, your project must produce the results specified in the project description. Your output does not have to be formatted identically to any sample output given in the project description. However, it must be neat, easy to read, be in a logical order, and contain all information specified in the project description.

When tested with invalid input, your project must handle the error(s) in the manner specified in the project description.
Your project must meet all project specific requirements.

Project descriptions may contain requirements regarding class methods, input values or formats, how data must be stored, etc. Your project must satisfy all such requirements.
Your project may not violate any project specific restrictions.

Project descriptions may contain restrictions regarding variable definitions, method signatures, etc. Your project may not violate any of these restrictions.

Design and Implementation — 40 points

To be successful in this course, your projects must be properly designed and implemented in addition to producing the correct result. An excellent program exhibits proper object-oriented design including encapsulation, code reuse, inheritance, polymorphism, and other OOP topics discussed in class. Class implementations and code written for any main() methods should exhibit appropriate top-down design. Additionally, an excellent program exhibits clear, straight-forward logic in its algorithms. For example, an excellent program does not contain long nested if-else statements or for/while loops with convoluted exit conditions.

Your grade for this section will be:

41–50 points

The grader may assign extra credit for a design and implementation that exceeds the standard expectations. The design and implementation must show additional work beyond the requirements or must use especially elegant or advanced methodologies.
40 points

A design and implementation that meets all design and implementation expectations, but may have one or two minor problems
30–39 points

A design and implemenation that has a few small problems and/or falls slightly short of the best approach
20–29 points

A design and implementation that has serious problems and/or falls significantly short of the best approach
10–19 points

A design and implementation with extremely serious problems, but nonetheless shows some effort and understanding of OOP and top-down principles
0 points

A design and implementation that shows no effort to follow OOP and top-down principles

Adherance to Coding Standards — 10 points

It is your responsibility to read and understand the coding standards document.

Your grade for this section will be 0, 5, or 10 points at the grader’s discretion.

Project Grade Changes

Visit your instructor during regular office hours (or make an appointment) to request a project grade change when you think the grader has made a mistake. Come prepared to show your instructor evidence of the grader’s specific mistake. Project grades will not be changed just because you think the grader has deducted too many points for a line item on the grade sheet.

Don’t waste your time or your instructor’s time by asking for a grade change just because you’re not happy with your grade.

Remember that if you have a question regarding your project grade, you have exactly one week from the receipt of your grade to speak to your instructor in person.

Project Regrades

In some unusual circumstances you may recieve a low project score because of a single, simple error that results in many incorrect outputs or results in a compiler error. The definition of “simple error” is determined by your instructor. In such cases, your instructor may (at his/her discretion) allow you to fix the simple mistake and have your project regraded.