15-110 Fall 2010 Homework 10

 This homework has two parts which are independent from each other:

Part A – requires you to write a proposal for your final project

Part B – requires you to participate on an educational based research

Part A is due on Monday November 15th by 10:00pm

Part B is due on Sunday November 21st by 10:00pm

 
PART A (50 points)

This part of the homework requires you to write a proposal for your term project.  Your proposal is a written document (no code!) that explains, with the necessary details, what you (and your partner, if you have one) plan to do.  Feel free to include pictures and diagrams in your proposal, but these are not required.
 

This is basically the start of the Design Documents section that you will submit with your project.
 

You should meet with your Mentor CA as many times as needed to refine your proposal.  Your Mentor will help you calibrate the scope of your project, and will provide suggestions and recommendations.  But the Mentor will not tell you what you should do for the project.  Also, the Mentor will grade your proposal as either approved or not.  Thus, the grade for your proposal is either 0 or 50 points.  If it is 0 points, you will have the chance to resubmit it the next day.  If it is 0 points on the resubmission, then you will be assigned a topic (and your 0 will stick on hw10 part A).

Before you write your proposal you should read the instructions for Homeworks 11-13 at https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~110/handouts/hw11-13.html

The proposal should be no longer than one page, and it should include the following elements:

  1. Project title.

  2. Project description: main purpose and functionalities of your program.

  3. External resources (if any) that you plan to use for your project.

  4. Expected timeline of your implementation. In particular, specify the objectives you plan to reach by the end of the first week (Friday 11/19), the end of the second week (Friday 11/26) and the final deadline (Wednesday 12/1).


Finally, it is important that you keep track of the time spent with your Mentor.  This is part of the log you need to submit when the project is due.

 

 

PART B (50 points)

For this part of the homework, you are going to work with an Intelligent Tutoring System for introductory programming in Python. This part of the homework is strictly individual. You will need to access a website to complete this activity. You are going to be graded based on completeness and correctness, but don't worry about getting a few questions wrong: in the interaction with an Intelligent Tutoring System, this is an expected part of the learning experience, and you will not be penalized for that. However, the tutor can estimate when you are guessing, so it is not a good idea to do so. You don’t have to solve all problems at once. You are allowed to take breaks, as a matter of fact we recommend doing so. The system will remember where you left and will allow you to continue until you finish it.

 

The tutoring system will ask whether or not you want to participate in the research.  You can answer either way, but we hope that most of you will choose to participate.  Whether or not you participate will not affect your grade on this assignment or in this course.

 

You won’t be able to see any grades, but you will know when your answer is correct. Based on completeness and correctness (but, once again, we don't expect you to get all the questions right on your first attempt), we will assign you a score between 10 and 50.

 

If at any given point your answers are not accepted (you are stuck) you need to press tab-tab-enter and the tutor will accept what you have typed and move on. Because the fields allow for multi-line answers (you can press enter as a part of the answer) using tab indicates a desire to move to the next part of the tutor.

 

Log into the tutor:

Go to the website http://www.tutorshop.org/realm/cstutor

 

Your username and password are your Andrew Id. Again, this part of the homework is strictly individual.

 

Complete the problem sets in the order assigned.

 

 

 

Start a problem set by clicking on the problem in the list on the left.  You may exit the tutor at any point, it will remember the last question you completed, and when you next log in it will return you to that location in the tutor.

 

Three Types of Problems

There are three types of problems you will encounter in the system.  The first will be a simple multiple choice problem:

Choose your answer from the drop down list at the bottom of the screen.  Press the done button when finished.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second type of problem is a multiple choice problem that requires you to first type in an answer in your own words.

 

 

You will NOT be allowed to answer the drop down question if you do not type in your answer first.  If you attempt to answer the drop down question first it may be recorded as an error.  If you feel that you are stuck, or that the tutor is not accepting your answer in the text box press “tab – tab- enter” and your response will be accepted and allow you to move on.

 

 

The third type of question is a code writing question.

 

 

Write your answer to the question in the lower box.  Press tab-tab-enter to have your answer accepted (it will turn green) and then press the done button.

Two Problem Sets

Due to the nature of human research, you need to have access to both problem sets for the research study, even though they are similar.  After completing Problem Set A and B, and Questions 1-10 you will notice a second set of Questions 1-10.  You are welcome to complete the second set of questions but it is not required for your homework assignment.