AE3051 Rules and Grading

AE3051 Rules and Grading

Rules

Attendance at the lecture and laboratory meetings is compulsory; roll will be taken.
Laboratory time is limited, so it is vital that you be in the proper lab group and that you report to the laboratory on time. If for some reason you cannot make the lab time for which you are scheduled, you have to make arrangements in advance to attend the lab at a different time. In general, a given lab experiment will only be available on the specific days and weeks posted (it can not be repeated for a single student as any other time).
Preparation: Read the appropriate lab manual before coming to lecture. You will also have to pass a short lab quiz that will be available on the AE3051 T-Square site.
Preliminary calculations or list of test points are often required. Prepare them in advance of your lab; they are due at the beginning of the lab and my not be turned in late.
Data Required: Review the lab manual and the lab supplement before your lab time to determine what data you must acquire. You and your lab group are supposed to run the experiments; the TA's are there to help and guide you. They are not supposed to tell you what data is required, that is covered in the manual and supplement.
If changes to the lab are made, you should pay attention to the instructions of the following in descending order of importance: 1) what the TA’s say during lab (but you might want to make sure you understood them correctly), 2) what the lab supplement states, and 3) what the lab manual requires.
Lab Report Due Date: Reports are normally due at the beginning of your next lab period.
Individual Lab Reports: You are to work on the lab reports (written and oral) individually. You are allowed to share data and discuss what took place during the experiment with other members of your group (or the TAs or the instructor). However, the lab reports are your chance to learn and communicate your findings on your own. You MAY NOT work together on preparing lab reports, including text, graphs or other figures, and tables that you present in your report (unless permission is given in class or in the manual/supplements for sharing specific figures). Similarly you should not be discussing the answers to the supplemental questions with any other students. You CAN get help using relevant computer tools from other students. For example, if you need help learning how to make a graph in Excel, you are free to ask ANYONE how to do it (again, you can not share graphs with fellow class members). This is an issue that falls under the umbrella of the GT Honor Code (see below). Students suspected of academic dishonesty can be sent directly to the Dean of Students, with the potential for receiving an F in the course. So please, turn in your own work.
We assume that you have read the Georgia Institute of Technology Academic Honor Code and that you understand and accept your responsibility as member of the Georgia Tech community to uphold the honor code at all times. In addition, we assume that you understand your options for reporting honor violations as detailed in the code. Thus we will not tolerate any academic dishonesty!

Grading

An unexcused lecture absence will result in a 30% penalty from the corresponding laboratory report. An unexcused laboratory absence will result in a zero being given for that laboratory. See the course instructor in advance (if at all possible) if you can not attend a lecture or need to reschedule a lab.
The prelab quiz is worth 15% of the full credit for that lab. You must pass the quiz before the corresponding lecture to get full credit. Partial credit (5 of the 15%) can be earned by passing the quiz LATE (after the lecture but before your lab time).
Lab reports will be accepted for up to 3 days late (real days, not "working" days), with a penalty of 10% per day. If your lab report will not be ready within this time, see the course instructor (in advance, with a good reason) if you hope to get any credit. Do not get in the habit of handing labs in late as it will significantly lower your grade.
In your report, you must answer ALL the required questions. They represent an important part of your grade.
Usually, lab reports will be returned one week after they are turned in. We do realize that because of this, errors made on the first report may be repeated on the second. This will be taken into account in the grading of the first two labs, but by the third lab, there will be no excuses.
Each data report (there are 7) will count 8% toward the final grade, each formal report (2) will be 14%, and the oral report will count 16% toward the final grade. There will not any final or midterm exams.
Your final grade is more than an average of your lab reports. Even though grading is very thorough, we also carefully evaluate each students performance in regards to items such as how well each student learned the material, how well they communicate in their reports, class participation and how well the lab was conducted.