Advanced C++ Programming COMP6771 20T2

Mark Update

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Thursday 03 September 2020, 11:14:41 PM.

Hi everyone,

Apologies for the second notice in one day. After a number of emails from students with questions about marks, I've done some digging around some of the issues that we've been facing. So check your mark again :) I won't bore you with the details, but the short reason is that:

1. Some last minute scaling we did before marks released didn't get synced with UNSW's systems during our last upload
2. Assignment 3 marks that were updated over the weekend and didn't get synced with UNSW's systems for mark release

In terms of (1), apologies for the confusion this may cause some. We did a v1 on scaling and then a v2 (which was more generous), and it appears the v1 was uploaded and the v2 upload failed. Thankfully though, no one's updated mark is lower than their original released mark . Students on the upper end and lower end of the course will see limited to no movement. I hope this brings us all more in sync - I understand why those couple of dozen people were so confused when emailing me today.

Any reviews of exams, or any other issues that have been raised with me via email, are still being chased up. So don't think this will cause those to go into a black hole. We'll work through you with it.

Thanks!

Thanks again & Good luck

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Thursday 03 September 2020, 12:08:01 PM.

Hey everyone,

We got the MyExperience results today, and I wanted to thank so many people for filling it out - both with positive and negative comments. Overall the course received better feedback on average than other UNSW courses! You were very kind to us. The one metric that we didn't perform well in though was people felt that they had not learned enough about the ability to work online with others. This will be on part of this one of the biggest changes that will be made to 21T2 will be probably introducing more pair programming group work in at least one assignment.

In terms of the other critical feedback we had, most of it centered around the difficulties with toolchains, confusion with concepts/C++20, the negative impact of limited physical interaction, and having too many voices with authority in the course. In my view, most of these issues arose from the ambitious attempt to bring more cutting edge C++ and build systems into the course (concepts, some of ranges, other C++20 topics,issues around the complex toolchain). This also led to the occasional flow on effect where because I wasn't as capable as Chris on specific topics he introduced (ranges, concepts, iterators etc), and then we had to share discretion on authority, which in any situation will lead to some inconsistencies. Being in charge of the course, any decisions around approach and teaching are things I sign off on (for better or worse), and as part of that the negative side effects of some of these things are fundamentally my responsibility above anyone else.

Chris and I think the course definitely felt a bit bloated with the new topics this term, and that bloat caused some of the downstream struggles for some students. So, to give you some context Chris and I have an intention to push CSE to essentially start a properly advanced C++ course where the C++20, complex toolchain, complex modules come together and go even deeper on topics. It would be a follow on course from a slightly toned down COMP6771. This would also give COMP6771 the breathing room to be less difficult at the upper end and solve a number of things students pointed out as issues. Just to be clear -- this is not a thing officially happening, and no one has even remotely been talked to about this beyond Chris and myself. I just wanted to express our ideal intention for the future of C++-specific courses in CSE, so that you understand what we took away from this offering in terms of lessons learned around some of the bloat. If our push for that fails we will likely just tone back COMP6771 a bit. To those 9%~ of students that felt quite let down (and it expressed it quite specifically), I would like to share my apologies. While changes in future offerings don't change your own experiences, and some issues arise from constraints we have within UNSW that I can't control, I'm personally sorry that you came away feeling like that. We let some of you down and that's not lost on me.

Finally, in relation to your final results , thanks to those who have emailed me with their concerns, we will address them. A small number of students have had marks different to expected (e.g. 0 in the exam, or an assignment mark missing) due to strange technical errors or due to UNSW not propagating mark updates to your transcript yet. This probably doesn't effect you unless you unless it was really obvious when you saw it that something had gone terribly wrong.

Overall whether you had a great time or a bad time, I hope everything goes well in T3 and going forward, and if there is ever anything I can help out with in future never hesitate to reach out to me :) Always happy to chat to great students like all of you. Was a pleasure to meet so many. Stay safe!

Assignment 3 + Exam

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Thursday 27 August 2020, 10:03:17 PM.

Assignment 3

Assignment 3 results have been released. It was a hard assignment, and the average mark was much lower. I believe only half of the students scored above 50%, so don't beat yourself up too hard :)

If you feel something is wrong with your mark, you have until 10pm on Tuesday the 1st of September to raise your issue (see instructions below). Only issues that are raised before that date will be addressed.

• If you have automarking issues, please email cs6771@cse.unsw.edu.au (as per other assignments).
• If you have issues around your subjective testing or best practices mark, please email Simon Haddad simon.haddad@unsw.edu.au.

Final Exam

The final exam marks have been processed. They were scaled pretty heavily, and a raw mark of approximately 8/60 (13%) was adequate to pass the exam hurdle. There are nearly no students who managed to get above 50% for the course overall, but also fail the hurdle for the exam. As an educator this makes me happy, because it means that there are extremely limited cases of people who did well in the course, but failed because of poor exam performance.

Congratulations to a number of people who scored a raw mark of 20/20 in questions 1, questions 2, and questions 3 of the final exam. While no one got full marks in the exam as a whole, congratulations to Kevin Luxa for scoring 57.5/60 as a raw mark in the exam component.

The average raw mark for question 1 was approximately 16/20. For question 2 is was quite low, less than 5/20. For question 3 the average mark was approximately 10/20. That's really quite an impressive showing overall!!

We won't be releasing any marks relating to your exam directly. You can figure out your scaled exam mark by reverse engineering your final mark when the final results are published during the holidays.

Final Results

Good luck to those receiving their final results in the coming weeks. A reminder that you have 5 days to lodge a request for review with UNSW once your marks come out, if you choose to.

It's been a pleasure to meet so many of you this term and navigate through a more senior CSE course together. If you want to keep in touch add me on LinkedIn. Otherwise, hopefully our paths cross in future!!! Enjoy your holidays, try and take a break before the T3 train comes rumbling toward us :)