Grade Components
Each assignment supports the objectives of 6.033 in various ways.
Technical Material
Quizzes: One quiz is held during the term. A second quiz
will be scheduled during finals week. Each quiz will focus on half
of the class' material, but keep in mind that later topics in
6.033 build heavily upon the earlier topics. The quizzes will
test material from lectures, recitations, and the assigned
reading, and let us test whether students have mastered the
technical material.
Hands-ons: During most weeks, you will be expected to
complete a hands-on experiment that requires a computer, usually
an Athena workstation, and sometimes the Internet. These reinforce
some of the abstract concepts from the lectures or papers that
week, and let you find out how things really work.
Communication + System design and analysis
The 6.033 staff have worked with the MIT Writing, Rhetoric, and
Professional Communication (WRAP) program for more than 10 years to
design 6.033 writing and speaking assignments. We have chosen
assignments that are similar to the kinds of writing you will do in
the engineering workplace: preliminary reports, final
reports, and presentations. Communication assignments are designed
to help you conceptualize and develop the design project.
Design Project
The primary assignment in 6.033 is the design project. This
project is where the students get to design their own system, which is
the primary objective of this course.
The design project requires you to develop a detailed system
design to solve a real-world problem. This project will extend over
most of the semester, and will be done in teams of three students, all
of whom attend the same writing tutorial (with exceptions for
extenuating circumstances). The project will involve a preliminary
report, an oral presentation, an extended final report, and a peer
review. The feedback we give on your preliminary report and
presentation will aid in writing your final report.
Your design project will be done in teams of three. Real-world
systems are not built individually; it's always a team effort. Part
of the design project assignment is to learn to work productively
and effectively in this setting. We will give you tools for doing
so in the writing tutorials.
The preliminary report for the design project will be
evaluated by your Recitation Instructor and your Communication
Instructor. Your Communication Instructor will evaluate it according
to the grading rubric and assign a letter grade. Your Recitation
Instructor will evaluate the preliminary report to make sure your
design is on the right track; you should incorporate their feedback
into the presentation and report.
The presentation will be graded by your Recitation
Instructor. Your presentation should reflect the feedback you got
on your preliminary report; feedback on your presentation should
inform your final report. We will release guidelines for the
presentation as the due date gets nearer, but in general, your
presentation will focus on any changes you have made since the
preliminary report, rather than re-capping the entire system.
The presentation will receive a grade of check, check+, or check-.
A check+ will move your preliminary report grade up one letter, a
check- will move it down one letter, and a check will not change it.
(E.g., if you receive a B on the preliminary report, and a check+ on
the presentation, your "preliminary report + presentation" grade is
an A.)
The final report will also be graded by your Recitation
Instructor, and will receive a letter grade.
The peer review will be graded by your Communication
Instructor, and will receive a letter grade.
System Critiques
One of the goals of 6.033 is for students to be able to analyze and
critique technical systems. We will assign two system critiques
during the semester.
These critiques will be graded by your TAs and Communication
Instructors, and assigned a letter grade. The expectations for each
individual critique will be detailed in the tutorials. As your
skills at analyzing and reading technical papers improve throughout
the semester, we will expect your critiques to reflect that.
Participation
Recitation Participation
Our recitations are discussion-based, and we expect you to be
engaged and participate. Participating in a recitation means:
- Coming prepared to recitation (doing the reading, turning in the
pre-reading question etc.)
- Paying attention when the instructor is speaking (you can't
participation in a discussion if you don't know what it's about)
- Participating (verbally) in pair-/group-work
- Volunteering to answer questions when the instructor asks them.
(Note that you may not get called on each time. That's okay; our
class sizes prevent that. Statistically, if you're raising your
hand frequently, you'll get called on with some frequency.)
- Responding to other student's comments with an opinion of their own.
- Asking good questions in recitation (where "good" just means it's
clear that you prepared for the recitation).
We will assign the participation grade in two parts: one for the
first half of the semester, one for the second half of the semester.
We will also give you preliminary grades for each of these (one
about a quarter into the semester, one about three quarters into the
semester), so that you know where you stand and have time to
improve. This document explains in
more detail how your participation grade is determined.
Just like we expect you to be engaged in recitation, we also expect
you to be engaged with the class as a whole, including the
syllabus. To that end, once you've read this, please send
Dr. LaCurts your favorite .gif (a link to it is fine).
Communication Participation
A portion of your participation grade will also be based on your
participation in writing tutorials and on your understanding of
communication concepts and skills, as demonstrated by your work on
the design project and evaluated by your communication
instructor.
Note that over a third of your grade comes from written
assignments: we expect you to take writing seriously in this class.
Collaboration
You may not collaborate on quizzes. On hands-ons, it's okay to
discuss ideas with your classmates, but you should not be
collaborating on the actual answers. Take the UNIX hands-on for
example: it's okay to talk to your classmates about what pipes
are, it's not okay to work together to come up with a command that
prints an alternating matrix of 0's and 1's (i.e., the solution to
Question 3).
On all writing assignments you are welcome to discuss ideas with
others, but your writing should be your own and you
should acknowledge all contributions of ideas by others,
whether from classmates or from papers you have read.