CSCI 240 Grading Guidelines

This document explains some general guidelines and policies which are used by the TA's in grading programs.

Late Programs

See the Course Syllabus.

Compile Errors

A program that compiles with errors cannot receive a grade of more than 30% of the maximum points. This is because a program with compile errors is incapable of being run.  It should not be difficult - with the help of TA's if needed - to eliminate compile errors quickly.

A program that compiles with warnings (but can be executed) will receive a penalty of 5%.

General Grading Guidelines

For each assignment, certain documentation and code formatting standards will be in effect.  If you do not follow these guidelines, you may be penalized up to 20%.

In each assignment, certain aspects of the code are specified exactly and you are required to do them in that way, not some other way.  If you do not follow these instructions, you will be penalized.

Assuming that formatting, documentation, and program specifications have been followed correctly, the overall program score should reflect both what was done right and what was done wrong.  So a score, of, say, 80/100 means roughly that 80% of the program's function was done correctly.  For example, if a program is to calculate three things from user input and 2 of them are correct and 1 is wrong, you might get a score of 75%.  The reasoning would be that you read the input correctly and calculated 2 of 3 things correctly.  So if we weigh reading and the 3 calculations equally, you did 3 of 4 things right for 75%.