General guidelines for mandatory assignments
A mandatory assignment is a task that must be completed and approved for the student to be eligible for exam. Mandatory assignments will either be approved or not approved, and will not influence the final grade awarded in the course.
The number of mandatory assignments in a course shall be available on the course semester page at the start of the semester.
The expectations for the assignment shall be clear from the phrasing of the assignment.
Handing in mandatory assignments
The assignment must be handed in before the deadline stated in the assignment text. Hand ins after the deadline will not be accepted, except for postponements as described under the headlines ?Illness? and ?Other reasons for postponement? below.
Hand ins are usually done in Canvas (or Devilry) in the form of one PDF file. Scans must be easily readable. Hand ins that do not fulfill these criteria will usually not be accepted.
The hand in must include name, course, date/year and assignment number.
Cooperation
The Department of Physics encourage the students to cooperate when working on mandatory assignments and other hand ins, but each student must hand in an individual assignment. Some courses may have group assignments where one group delivers one report.
For individual assignments, please note:
You can use all available support material.
Cooperation is allowed, but your hand in must be phrased and written by the student, and reflect your understanding of the subject.
If you include text, illustrations, program code or anything else made by others, you must point it out clearly, and note where it is from.
Getting hints on how to solve a problem is allowed, but this must be used as a basis for solving it by yourself, not just be copied as is.
You may be asked to orally account for the contents of your hand in.
You must be able to explain the contents in detail, and explain how you reached your answers. If the enquiry finds you unable to explain your work, your hand in may be graded as failed (or be deemed cheating, see below).
In case of a group assignment where the group hands in together, every member of the group is required to be able to account for the main features of the hand in. Furthermore, every member must have contributed a reasonable amount of the total, and be able to identify and account for his or her part in detail.
If you have doubts as to what is legal cooperation, you can contact your group teacher or lecturer.
Quotes and sources in assignment hand ins
IMPORTANT: As a student you are required to familiarize yourself with the rules for usage of quotes and sources, and the regulations about cheating.
In any type of hand in it is important that it is obvious what is your own work.
You must note who you have cooperated with. If you have cooperated with others, used other’s opinions, ideas, interpretations, literature, internet sources or other sources in your hand in, you must always accurately note where you have found the information.
This applies to all kinds of work, oral and written, as well as laboratory reports.
Read more about how to refer to sources at the university library. (http://www.ub.uio.no/english/writing-publishing/referencing/index.html)
Openness and is foundational for all academic work. Presenting others’ work as one’s own is considered plagiarism, cheating or a cheating attempt.
Read more about cheating at the University of Oslo. (http://www.uio.no/english/studies/examinations/cheating/index.html)
Publication and deadlines
Projects are usually published at least 14 calendar days before the deadline; weekly assignments at least 7 calendar days before the deadline. The deadline shall be clearly stated in the problem text. The students are expected to familiarize themselves with the deadlines.
When handing in an assignment the student should easily be able to find a confirmation that the hand in is received, an example of this is the delivery system Canvas (or Devilry).
Assignments handed in after the deadline will be marked as failed unless you have a valid reason for delivering late (see below).
Illness
Students suffering from an acute illness are given an extension of three calendar days on condition that they deliver a statement declaring their illness, and send this in an e-mail to the group teacher (This rule does not apply to weekly assignments or the second and later submissions.) Extensions of the deadline due to longer periods of acute illness must be approved by the study administration based on medical documentation.
Feedback
The student should normally receive feedback on a hand in within one week in case of weekly assignments, especially when an exam in the course is near. If a mandatory assignment is dependent on a previous assignment, feedback must be received early enough that the student has reasonable time to solve the next mandatory assignment.
Mandatory assignments shall be corrected by qualified personnel or other students, given a guide written by a qualified person.
Feedback shall contain a short summary of the evaluator’s impression of the hand in, as well as constructive suggestions for what could be improved. If the hand in is deemed failed the evaluator must give an explanation of why it was not approved.
If the course requires the assignment to be approved, and the evaluator considers the hand in to be close to being approved, the student shall normally be given a chance to improve it for a second chance. In this case, the student will receive an overview of what to improve.
In courses with weekly assignments the student will normally not get a chance to hand in more than once.
If allowed a second chance, the new deadline should consider the workload, and how long till next assignment; normally 3-5 work days.
Reuse of mandatory assignments
For students with all mandatory assignments in a course approved, the assignments are considered approved for 5 years. In special cases, such as modification of a course syllabus or requirements, previously approved assignments may no longer be valid. If this is the case, the semester page shall inform about this before the start of the semester.
You are required to take any midterm or final exam even if you have approved mandatory assignments from earlier semesters.
Contact
Student administration
- E-mail: studieinfo@fys.uio.no
- Phone: 22 85 64 28