Lab Activities
Labs are held every week, during section. You will not be graded on your performance during lab, though you are expected to complete them. You may miss up to two labs over the course of the semester with no penalty. If you miss any more than that, we will reduce your course grade by half a letter grade (e.g. B goes to B-) for every two labs missing.
Table of Contents
Weekly Labs
All labs are completed through the online lab system. When a lab becomes available, a link will appear in the table below. Exact due dates vary by lab section.
| Lab | Topic | Code | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 0 | Getting Started | lab0.zip | 09/04/19 |
| Week 1 | Expressions & Assignments | no code | 09/11/19 |
| Week 2 | Functions & Modules | no code | 09/18/19 |
| Week 3 | Strings & Testing | lab3.zip | 09/25/19 |
| Week 4 | Debugging | lab4.zip | 10/02/19 |
| Week 5 | Objects & Conditionals | lab5.zip | 10/09/19 |
| Week 6 | Asserts & Lists | lab6.zip | 10/23/19 |
| Week 7 | Recursion Exercises | lab7.zip | 10/30/19 |
| Week 8 | Loops, Lists, & Dictionaries | lab8.zip | 11/06/19 |
| Week 9 | Card Games | lab9.zip | 11/13/19 |
| Week 10 | Typing & Exceptions | lab10.zip | 11/20/19 |
| Week 11 | Loop Invariants | lab11.zip | 12/04/19 |
| Week 12 | Sequence Algorithms | lab12.zip | 12/11/19 |
Lab Policies
Because of the course size this semester, all labs will be done through the online lab system. We have used this as an interface for the past three years, and students really like it. It has the advantage that you continue to work on the lab in your room on your own time and still receive quality feedback.
The drawback of an online lab system is that it requires exact answers, which is hard if you are still struggling to learn the material. That is why we allow you to have a human check off a lab even if the answers are incorrect. If a staff member looks over your lab and sees that you have put in enough work, they can manually override the lab system. There is no shame in doing this, and you can always go back and retry the exercises later with no penalty. The goal for the labs is practice, not perfection.
For most labs you will have one week to complete it. The deadline for a lab checkoff – either manual or by the computer – is the end of your next discussion section. We will be enforcing this rule exactly, so students with a Tuesday 12:20 section section must be checked off by 1:20. This is the only way we can ensure an orderly check-off policy with this course size. However, for the first three weeks we will relax this rule while students are still changing sections. During that time, all check-offs will be due a the end of the last section (Wednesday at 8:30pm).
If you receive an automated check-off before your discussion section, you do not need to come to lab. However, some labs this semester will include thought questions. These are open-ended questions that we have to grade manually. You will not get immediate feedback on these questions from the online system, and you will need to show them to the course staff in your section.
Given that you may miss two labs, we try to keep the deadlines strict. However, we do allow short extensions for religious holidays and in case of illness. If you feel that you need an extension on a lab, please contact your lab instructor, who can be found from the Sections page.