Quiz Notes, Strategies, and Considerations
Please read the Syllabus and the FAQ pages for additional information about course policies with regards to the missed/dropped quizzes.
Below are a few tips and information to help you do well.
Table of contents
Taking a Quiz
Preparing for the quiz
Practice by mindfully working through the challenge activities and solving labs. Also, carefully review your notes from lectures.
Focus on writing your own code from scratch.
- For the examples in the textbook, try to write the solution yourself, without looking at the provided solution, and then compare your code with the one that is provided in the textbook.
- For each Figure that shows sample code, run it yourself or try to write that code yourself.
- If the instructor note in the textbook shows an example or asks a question, work through the example, check the output, answer the question and check the result.
Quizzes are open-book and we recommend making notes beforehand (i.e. as you’re studying for the quiz) and having those close-by when taking the quiz. However, note that the quizzes are timed and, if you have not studied for them, no amount of open-book/notes are going to help you finish on time (so, obviously, study for the quizzes!!)
Quiz Logistics
We highly recommend using a computer (not a phone or a tablet) for doing the work in this class, especially, during quizzes. At the very least, it should help avoid undesirable capitalization and auto-correct that is common on mobile devices.
Before the start of the class, have your notes (if you have them) ready for reference.
Open Gauchospace and Gradescope (Gradescope will not be used for all quizzes - the prof. will tell you which ones) sites.
Open a new file in your IDE (again, if this applies to the quiz at hand).
Before opening a quiz on Gauchospace, note the end time and the quiz duration.
- On Gauchospace, the sidebar on the right should show you the total number of questions as well as the remaining time.
All quizzes will always start on Gauchospace.
Later on in the quarter, we will be doing quizzes (and some labs) on a more sophisticated platform called Gradescope. We will update you on this with more information when the time comes…