Midterm Information

Material covered

The exam will focus on the material that we have discussed in lecture from the beginning of the session through the material on linked lists and linked list traversals.

Remember that you can access all of the relevant lecture materials in the post week Notes weekly folders of the Lectures section of our Blackboard site.

Exam details

• The exam will be administerd during our scheduled lecture time(s), on Monday Jun 16th.

• The exam will be 120 minutes in length.

• Students who have received permission for extra time should send an email to their instructor with a reminder of their accommodation.

• The exam will include questions similar to the ones posed in lecture, lab, and weekly Top Hat questions. However, these questions will not be multiple-choice. You will need to determine and write the answer without a list of options to choose from.

• In addition, there will be questions that ask you to write a method or a short program class. These problems will be similar to ones that you have solved in the labs and problem sets, but you will write your code on paper, and you will not be able to use VS Code or any other coding environment during the exam. If you follow the design process that we have discussed and practiced in the lectures and labs, you should be able to successfully write code on paper and convince yourself of its correctness.

• You must bring your BU ID or another photo ID (e.g., a passport or driver’s license) to the exam, so that we can check it at the start of the exam.

• We reserve the right to conduct a separate one-on-one oral examination with any student to verify the student’s understanding of the material.

Preparing for the exam

• One way to prepare is to review the pre-lecture materials and lecture notes and make a summary of the key points in your own words. “Boiling down” the material in this way is a great way to ensure that you really understand the key concepts.

• We also encourage you to do practice problems. Options include:

  • redoing the in-class exercises found in the lecture notes

  • redoing the lab exercises, the solutions for which are available on the Labs page

  • some additional practice problems
    (Note: Solutions to these additional practice problems will be posted under Other Content on Blackboard as we get closer to the exam.)

  When working on practice problems, try to come up with your answers on paper, rather than through a trial-and-error approach in your IDE. This will give you an experience that is similar to the one that you will have during the exam.

• Feel free to post questions on Piazza (using the midterm_exam1 tag) or email your instructor.