The assignments for the labs will be made available on the web page. Read and study the lab assignment before coming to the lab session. You should start working on it (or even complete it) if you wish, but you do not have to. There will be no written preliminary work. Prepare questions related to any difficulties you have, so you can discuss them with your friends or get help from the assistants during the lab session. If you have difficulties, you can also get help from the assistants during their office hours or by making an appointment.
When you come to the lab, you will be given two quizzes. The post-quiz will be given first, more about that below. The pre-quiz, about 5 minutes, will be given second. This will mostly cover the assignment and related topics. It will be closed book/notes/device. It may include conceptual, analytical, and Matlab-based questions, as well as questions about the assignment, what you are expected to do in this lab, etc. It will be 20% of your lab grade.
Most of the lab assignment will be completed outside of the lab sessions and you will prepare a report. You are free to discuss concepts and ideas and ask questions both inside the lab and outside, but you are not allowed to look at or use solutions or code someone else wrote or get help writing your report or code. You are not allowed to work as a team. Using AI tools as an aid is not forbidden but not recommended since you will be tested during the post-quiz so doing it from scratch will have the greatest educational value. Use of AI tools to modify someone else's work and present it as your own will be considered plagiarism.
You must upload the lab report within one week of the session to Moodle. What must be included in the report is explained in the assignment. Your report should be prepared in your own handwriting and signed. You can use a pencil if you prefer and you can erase or cross out mistakes. Please scan legibly and upload as a single pdf file. Your report must be clear and legible, but it does not have to be formally formatted. You do not have to re-draw MATLAB plots by hand; you can append or insert printed or screenshot versions of plots to your handwritten report. Please clearly indicate question number and/or letter of each plot. Normally, you should write MATLAB commands by hand in the report. However, if any part of any question requires the writing of a MATLAB code longer than 5 lines, then you can attach a printout or screenshot of the code, instead of handwriting it. The report is 40% of the lab grade.
At the beginning of the lab session, before the pre-quiz for that lab session, there will also be a post-quiz of the previous lab whose report you already uploaded, lasting about 15-20 minutes. This quiz will assess how well you understood what you were doing while doing that lab. This will be worth 40% of the lab grade.
To summarize, each session will begin with the post-quiz about the previously uploaded lab report, followed by the pre-quiz for the new lab. The remainder of the lab session will be devoted to discussion and interaction with others and the assistants. If the room is crowded, you may choose to work in nearby study spaces in the building with your own computer.
If you are late for a quiz, you will not be given extra time. If you arrive after the quiz is over, you cannot take the quiz. It is allowed to take one of the quizzes and not the other, if you accept getting zero.
Please make sure that you upload your report to the Moodle page of the corresponding Lab. Do not leave it in the mail box or office desk of the assistants, or email it, as it can get lost.
Delayed report scores will be multiplied by 1/(1+(t/2)^2) where the delay time t is measured in days as a continuous-time variable, and then rounded down to the nearest integer. For example, if you are 4 hours late it will be multiplied by 0.993. If you are 40 hours late it will be multiplied by 0.590. HW will not be accepted after 144 hours delay. This policy will hold for all assignments throughout the semester.
Your two lowest lab grades will be discarded before computing your average. This means you can miss two of the labs and get zero from them, and still have the chance to get a high lab score. This is to cover illness, conflicting exams and other similar situations. Documented excuses such as medical reports and conflicting exams will be considered only if they cover three or more sessions. Documentation covering only one or two sessions will not be considered. Of course, if you miss fewer than two labs, that may help increase your average score.