Mid-Semester Exam

The Mid-Semester Exam will take place in Week 7 during scheduled lab groups*. You must attend the Mid-Semester Exam in your normal scheduled group - you may not attend a different group without prior arrangement with the lecturers!

The exam will be completed electronically, using a special clean RSCS Lab environment without Internet access. Personal laptops, phones and other electronic devices may not be used. You are permitted to bring one A4 sheet of paper (with notes on both sides) to refer to during the exam.

There will be 10 minutes to study the material followed by 90 minutes to complete the exam.

* Monday 09:00-11:00 Lab Group will sit the MSE in Week 8, Monday 24 April

Sample Exam

We have provided a sample mid-semester exam. Please note:

  • For the sample exam, you will need to fork this repo in order to get the template code and the tests. In the real exam, you will have the relevant files already pre-loaded in your system when you start up. You will not use Git in the real exam.
  • You will be marked according to only what you do in the browser. It is therefore essential that you copy any code you write into the browser, as instructed in the exam.
  • The exam will be entirely auto-graded, so:
    • Your code must pass the tests.
    • Each coding question has five tests, you will get one mark for each test that you pass.
    • You need to ensure that the code that goes into the browser is correct and complete. For example, each class starts with package comp6700.mse;, if you were to delete this from the version you put in the browser, your code would not compile and you would get zero.
  • There are 30 true/false questions, but you only need to answer 20 to get full marks. Make sure you carefully read the instructions, which explain that you will be penalized for incorrect answers. The marking scheme is designed so that answering randomly will give you an expected mark of zero.
  • Your work is automatically saved as you type. There’s a small notification at the top right of the exam that gives you a checksum for the exam and the number of bytes you’ve typed so far. There is no ‘save’ button. You simply work away, and your work is automatically saved. You can test this by quitting your browser and then restarting it and you will find that your work is just as it was when you left off.
  • If you change your mind on any of the questions, use the ‘clear’ button to clear your answer.

Older Sample Mid-Semester Exam Paper

Updated:  13 Apr 2017/ Responsible Officer:  Head of School/ Page Contact:  Alexei Khorev