Ian!s Assignment Submission Standards

Updated: January 17, 2011

The College allocates a maximum of 108 seconds per student per class hour per week for a professor to do "student evaluation" such as marking assignments, midterms, and exams. For a class delivered as four hours per week, this means 7.2 minutes per student per week, or less than two hours total evaluation per student for all assignments, tests, and exams for the entire 15-week term.

In marking assignments, I want to spend time working with your ideas and not waste time looking up your student number or section, or trying to figure out which assignment I have in front of me. If I spend five minutes trying to figure out who you are, that leaves me zero time to mark your submission.  With 150 students to assess each week, every minute of time I spend per student generates 2 1/2 hours of work!

To make this work manageable, I have some rules for anything you physically hand in that you want me to mark.  (Assignments submitted via a course management system such as Blackboard do not need an assignment label, since Blackboard tags your submissions.) Assignments that don't conform to the submission format will incur a penalty.  (The penalty may be that I leave your mis-formatted or poorly identified assignment to the last and do not have time to mark it.)

These standards are a minimum.  Anything you do that makes the assignment easier to understand and to read is welcome.  Good style and organization is valued both here and in the job market.

Most materials submitted non-electronically (including diskettes, if required) must be identified using the following label.  (Assignments submitted via a course management system such as Blackboard do not need an assignment label, since Blackboard tags your submissions.) You can copy the label from this Web page, add your personal information, and use it.  For full marks, do not re-order, change the spelling of, or delete any of the items on this label; please copy the eight items exactly:

Eight-line Assignment Submission Label
Item (must be spelled exactly as given)	Fill in this space ...
Student Name
Algonquin EMail Address
Student Number
Course Number
Lab Section Number
Professor Name
Assignment Name/Number/Date
Comments

For full marks, the exact spellings used on the eight lines above are required.  No alterations are permitted.

1. Your Student Name is required so I can tell it's you.
2. Your Algonquin EMail Address is required so that I can contact you if I have problems understanding what you submitted.  Just the userid part of the address is required; you can omit the "@algonquincollege.com" part.
3. Your Student Number is required so I can enter your marks for the registrar.  No student number, no mark.
4. The Course Number is required because assignments for many of my courses are submitted in the same place.  If I can't tell immediately which course a submission is for, it may be put into my junk pile and not be marked.
5. Your Lab Section Number (not the lecture section number, if they are different!) is required so I can bring the assignment to the correct Lab when it is marked.  (Some classes don't have different Lab Section numbers; in that case, use your class section number.)
6. The Professor Name is required so I can tell if you really meant it for me.   It may also save you if, on a dark night, you accidentally put an assignment meant for me into the assignment box belonging to a different instructor.
7. The Assignment Name/Number/Date (e.g. Assignment 3 due July 31 2010) is required so I can separate the assignments into piles before marking.  Don't put two different assignments together under the same label; use separate submissions so that I can separate them.  Please - separate each assignment!
8. The Comments field is optional.  It may be a brief comment that tells me that what you handed in is not complete and that I should collect all the remaining parts of this assignment before marking it.  Write in the specific part of the assignment, e.g. "Part 2/2: source listing to accompany test results". The comments relate to the assignment submission, not to the programming that might be in the file. Use a separate file header if you are submitting program source code.

Here is a sample eight-line label - use separate labels for each Assignment:

• Student Name:                 Eileen Dover
• Algonquin EMail Address:      dove0001
• Student Number:               074-210-779
• Course Number:                CST 2001
• Lab Section Number:           021
• Professor Name:               Ian Allen
• Assignment Name/Number/Date:  Homework 3 due July 31, 2010
• Comments: 

On paper, you don't need to put this label on a separate cover page; it only has to be visible on the outside of your submission.   You can put it on the top half of your first page of your submission.

Don't hide this label; put it on the outside of anything you submit.

For full marks, the spelling of the eight label fields must be exactly as shown. No alterations are allowed.

Assignments submitted electronically (e.g. via network)

Printed Materials - Label the Outside

Assignments submitted on diskette

If you submit your assignments in a professional format that is clear and easy to understand, I will be pleased to give them my full attention.  Anything you do to make the format clearer or easier to mark will weigh in your favour.  Thank you!

If the assignment submission is lengthy and contains more than one part, supply near the front of the assignment a cover letter or Table of Contents.  This table outlines how you have structured your submission and in what order I'll find the pieces.  You can put it on a cover page under the Assignment Submission Label, if it fits.

For example, your table of contents might tell me that the submission contains two program source listings and your test strategy, followed by test input files and test output files for each program:

Sample Table of Contents for Assignment 3
Basic Sort Algorithm	main()	page 2
	bubblesort()	page 4
	display()	page 6
Advanced Sort Algorithm	main()	page 7
	quicksort()	page 8
	display()	page 10
Test Strategy	What and Why	page 11
Basic Sort Testing	test #1 input/output	page 12
	test #2 input/output	page 13
	test #3 intput/output	page 14
Advanced Sort Testing	test #4 input/output	page 15
	test #5 input/output	page 16
	test #6 input/output	page 17

Label each individual item clearly within the assignment, to make each section clear and easy to find.  If I don't see a label on an item explaining what it is, I won't have time to figure it out.

Number your pages consecutively, so that I can find things using the table of contents.