On successful completion of this course students will be able to:

 

1	Demonstrate an understanding of the layered and modular nature of computer systems
2	Design the core components of a computer from basic components
3	Understand and Apply knowledge of how computers represent programs and data
4	Explain how a computer executes a program
5	Write assembler and machine code
6	Understand the translation process from higher level representations into machine language
7	Explain how Input/output operations are implemented, and describe some basic I/O devices

 
The above course learning outcomes are aligned with the Engineers Australia Stage 1 Competency Standard for the Professional Engineer.
The course is designed to develop the following Elements of Competency: 1.1   1.2   1.3   1.5   1.6   2.1   2.2   2.3   3.1   3.2   3.3   3.4   3.5   

The textbook for the course is: The Elements of Computing Systems, second edition, by Noam Nisan and Shimon Shocken, MIT Press, 2021, ISBN13-978-0-262-53980-7.

It is highly recommended that you buy this book. It is available in soft cover form and available electronically as an e-book. If you have access to the first edition, use that instead. There is no significant difference in the material covered by both editions.

The first six chapters of the textbook are on the Nand2Tetris website used by the course but we will be using materials in chapters beyond this.

The primary electronic resource for the course is the MyUni pages. These pages link to other electronic resources you will need such as the web submission system.

The course will be taught using a combination of pre-recorded lectures, lecture review quizzes, workshops, quiz exams and programming assignments. There is no end of semester written exam.

You are expected to read the relevant chapters of the text book before and after each lecture, and to actively participate in workshop activities.

The lecture review quizzes will be open during the week that they are due. Please check the course website regularly so you do not miss the lecture review quiz due dates.

To get the most out of the workshop sessions you need to prepare in advance and make sure that you focus on the workshop material during the workshop. This is the best time to get direct feedback on and assistance with the practical skills covered in the workshop. If you do not attend the workshops and ask questions, you may not be properly prepared for the programming assignments.

The programming assigments build on the practical skills shown in the workshops and give you an opportunity to demonstrate what you are learning. To get the most out of the programming assignments it is important to reflect on what you may be learning whilst attempting them by keeping a logbook that records how you developed your work. The timing, frequency and content of the logbook entries are all considered in the assessment of the programming assignments.

You are expected to spend 10 hours per week on the course. This includes:

• attending all of your enrolled classes,
• up to 2 hours per week on lecture preparation / review,
• up to 5 hours per week on the assignments and workshop preparation, and
• any remaining time working on the following week's material.

The lecture topics, quizzes, workshop descriptions and assignment descriptions are all available on the course website.

A schedule is available on the course website but specific due dates are only available in each quizz, workshop description or assignment description.

Assessment Task	Weighting (%)	Individual/ Group	Formative/ Summative	Due (week)*	Learning outcomes	CBOK Alignment**
Online Lecture Review Quizzes	+	Individual	Formative	1 to 11	1. 3. 6.	1.2 3.1
Workshops	+	Individual	Formative	1 to 12	1. 2. 3. 5. 6.	1.1 1.2 3.1 3.2 4.1
Assignments+	30	Individual	Formative	7, 9, 13	1. 2. 3. 5. 6.	1.1 1.2 3.1 3.2 4.1
Exam Quiz	5	Individual	Summative	3	1. 4. 7.	1.1 1.2 3.1 3.2 4.1
Supervised Exam Quizzes	65	Individual	Summative	4, 8, 12	1. 4. 7.	1.1 1.2 3.1 3.2 4.1
Total	100

* The specific due date for each assessment task will be available on MyUni.

+ The online lecture review quizzes, workshops and early submission of assignments may contribute to a bonus mark of up to 8.75%.

This assessment breakdown complies with the University's Assessment for Coursework Programs Policy.

**CBOK is the Core Body of Knowledge for ICT Professionals defined by the Australian Computer Society. The alignment in the table above corresponds with the following CBOK Areas:

1. Problem Solving
2. Professional Knowledge
3. Technology resources
4. Technology Building
5.  ICT Management

Hurdle Requirement: If your overall mark for the course is greater than 45 F but, your mark for the Week 12 Supervised Quiz Exam is less than 40% or your mark for Assignment 3 is less than 20%, your overall mark for the course will be reduced to 45 F.

Week 3 Unsupervised Quiz Exam

The scheduled Tuesday lecture time in week 3 will be used to run a 45 minute unsupervised quiz exam, which contributes up to 5%. The quiz will be open for 1 hour which should accommodate any additional time requirements for students with a DAP. This exam covers all material covered in the first two weeks of the course.

Supervised Quiz Exams

The scheduled workshop times in weeks 4, 8 and 12 will be used to run 45 minute supervised quiz exams which contribute up to 15%, 25% or 25% respectively. Each quiz will be open for 1 hour which should accommodate any additional time requirements for students with a DAP. Remote students will be monitored using zoom (a webcam will be required to show who is taking the exam).

These quiz exams will test your understanding of the lecture, workshop and assignment material. You must achieve at least 40% of the marks available in the week 12 supervised quiz exam or its replacement to satisfy one of the hurdle requirements for the course. These quiz exams must be taken under supervision.

Replacement Quiz Exams

The supervised quiz exams all examine material covered in earlier quiz exams so, where appropriate, a subset of the questions in a supervised quiz exam can be used as a replacement exam for the previous quiz exam. The final mark for a quiz exam is the better of the original exam mark or the replacement exam mark.

Week 3 Unsupervised Quiz Exam: The Week 4 Supervised Quiz Exam is automatically used as the replacement exam for all students regardless of circumstances. This gives every student a second chance.

Week 4 Supervised Quiz Exam: If a student is eligible for a replacement exam as demonstrated by appropriate written evidence, eg a medical certificate, the relevant subset of questions in the Week 8 Supervised Quiz Exam will be used as the replacement exam.

Week 8 Supervised Quiz Exam: If a student is eligible for a replacement exam as demonstrated by appropriate written evidence, eg a medical certificate, the relevant subset of questions in the Week 12 Supervised Quiz Exam will be used as the replacement exam.

Week 12 Supervised Quiz Exam: If a student is eligible for a replacement exam as demonstrated by appropriate written evidence, eg a medical certificate, there is a separate Week 12 Replacement Supervised Quiz Exam.

Programming Assignments

All programming assignments require you to write programs that will be assessed by considering three aspects of your submissions, automatic assessement by the Web Submission System, including an automatic review of the submitted programs coding style, and a manual review of the associated logbook. The logbook is a vital part of your assessment - a lack of a log-book with a narrative of your development process may result in a mark of 0 for the assignment. Details of how the three aspects are combined and a marking rubric is provided on the course website. These are linked to by each programming assignment description.

Each assignment has two submission times at which marks are awarded, a milestone submission and a final submission. The milestone submissions require some work to be completed early. You must achieve at least 20% of the marks available in programming assignment 3 to satisfy one of the hurdle requirements for the course.

Assignment	Milestone Due	Final Due	Description	Weighting
Assignment 1	Tuesday Week 7	Friday Week 7	Programming	5%
Assignment 2	Tuesday Week 9	Friday Week 9	Programming	5%
Assignment 3	Friday Week 11	Monday Week 13	Programming	20%

Bonus Marks

At the end of the course you will receive a bonus mark based on a maximum bonus mark that is scaled down based on your level of pariticipation in the course.

Maximum Bonus Mark

The maximum bonus mark you can receive is calculated using your final mark for the quiz exams and programming assignments. The maximum bonus is 0 if your score is less than 40% before rounding. If your score is greater than or equal to 40% the maximum bonus is progressively scaled down, in proproportion to your score, from 8.75 to 0 as your score increases from 40% to 85%. If your score is 85 or more, the maximum bonus is 0.

The maximum bonus mark is 8.75 * (85 - M) / 45

This is a graphical representation of how the maximum bonus mark varies with your score from 40 to 85:

Participation Marks

You may receive up to 4 participation marks for each workshop that you prepare for and complete a relevant activity. Preparation and completion of the activity will be both assessed via the Web Submission System. The due dates are available on the course website.

You may receive up to 5 additional participation marks for each of the first four workshops if they are completed in full by the end of the following teaching week. The due dates are available on the course website.

You may receive up to 5 participation marks for each lecture review quiz that you attempt. The quiz mark will be used as the participation mark. There will be a significant number of lecture review quizzes available on the course website. The quizzes will show you the correct answers when you submit and they will allow multiple attempts in the time they are available. The due dates are available on the course website.

You may receive up to 5 participation marks for early submission of a programming assignment. The final submission test marks awarded by the Web Submission System will be used as the participation mark and scaled to a score between 0 and 5. For all programming assignments, the best mark for any submission prior to the milestone deadline will be used to generate participation marks. For assignment 3, the best mark for any submission at least one week prior to the milestone deadline will be used to generate up to 5 additional participation marks.

The participation mark for assignment 1 is allocated to week 7, the participation mark for assignment 2 to week 9 and both participation marks for assignment 3 to week 12.

Final Bonus Mark Calculation

For each group of 3 consecutive weeks, ie  weeks 1 to 3, 2 to 4, 3 to 5, 4 to 6, 5 to 7, 6 to 8 , 7 to 9, 8 to 10, 9 to 11 and 10 to 12, the participation marks awarded will be added together and capped at 20. At the end of week 12, the total participation mark divided by 200 will be used as a participation percentage. This is used to scale down your maximum bonus mark and the result is added to your final mark for the course. The following table shows some example calculations:

Course Mark	Max Bonus	Participation (%)	Actual Bonus	Final Course Mark
0	0	100	0	0%
20	0	50	0	20%
40	8.75	65	5.7	46%
60	4.86	20	0.97	61%
75	1.94	100	1.94	77%
85	0	45	0	85%
100	0	100	0	100%

Late Penalties

Programming Assignments

All programming assignments must be submitted using the School of Computer Science online Submission System. Details are included in each assignment description on the course website.

Submissions made to a 'Submit Here' assignment are allocated a set of marks by a test script that are then used to separately calculate a a mark for each sub-assignment. Each sub-assignment has its own due date that is also used to cap the mark given to a specific submission, based on how many days late it is, as follows:

• up to 1 day late — mark is reduced to 75%, marks below 75% are not affected.
• up to 2 days late — mark is reduced to 50%, marks below 50% are not affected.
• up to 3 days late — mark is reduced to 25%, marks below 25% are not affected.
• More than 3 days late — mark is reduced to 0.

Notes:

• For each sub-assignment, you get the best mark awarded for any of your submissions after late penalties. Marks awarded for a particular submission cannot reduce the marks awarded for any other submission.
• We use the time at which a particular revision is submitted to the Web Submission System to determine late penalties not when the revision was committed to your svn repository.
• We expect to be able to return the final marks of each assignment within three weeks of the final due date.
• Any extensions will be displayed in the web submission system against specific sub-assignments and automatically used to adjust any late penalties.
• Extensions under a Disability Action Plan may be automatically granted at the start of semester. Failure to submit a DAP within the first two weeks of semester may result in any extension requests being refused.

Participation Marks

The bonus marks are intended to reflect timely engagement with the course material and as such the related activities must occur within the published time frames, exceptions are not permitted for any reason. Late submissions will receive a mark of 0. There are twice as many participation marks available than can be used so a small number of absences will not affect the final bonus mark.

Quiz Exams Exams

Students who do not attend an exam will be dealt with on a case by case basis subject to appropriate documentation being provided. Late submissions for any exam will receive a mark of 0.

Myuni Grade Book

The participation marks will be collated and published in the myuni grade book no more than 3 weeks after the week in which they are earned. A grade book comment may describe how the marks were calculated.

The programming assignment marks will be collated and published in the myuni grade book when the final submissions have been marked. Note, these may appear to be different from those in the web submission system because of the individual weightings applied to the milestone and final submission marks. A grade book comment may be included that describes how the components were used to calculate the final assignment mark.

All quiz exams will be muted after they are taken. After the last student has completed the quiz exam, a separate myuni assignment will be used to publish the quiz marks. A grade book comment may be included that describes a breakdown of the quiz exam marks by question categories and it may also include some general feedback. Access to the original quiz exam attempts will not be permitted.

A provisional final mark for the course may be published in the myuni gradebook, with a comment indicating the bonus mark included, which may be different to the final official result that is published later. The final official results will only be available through Access Adelaide after the end of semester examiner's meeting has reviewed the marks.