Second Year Course Noticeboard

Department of Computing
Imperial College London

This page contains information specific to the second year of study for all undergraduates studying computing at Imperial College London - that is Computing and JMC students.


Francesca Toni (f.toni@imperial.ac.uk)

Second Year Coordinator

 
 
News Second Year Reps Options Labs Exams Plagiarism Useful Links

News

3 October 2011 -- Welcome back!

Dear 2nd year students,

There are some important differences between first and second year:

  • second year coursework and labwork exercises are fewer and larger pieces of work than those in the first year

  • some of the taught courses are compulsory and some are optional (see Options)

  • all labwork marks contribute towards your year's labwork total; the pass mark is 40%, and you must pass the labwork to pass the year

  • the taught courses are assessed by a combination of exams and coursework; the pass mark for each combined exam/coursework is 40%, and you must pass each combination to pass the year

    • The schedule of coursework and labwork in cate gives you plenty of warning about upcoming exercises. You should ensure that your exercises have been submitted correctly by checking soon after submission, and raising any queries immediately with the senior tutor or with cate.

    You are expected to meet coursework and labwork deadlines but if there are difficulties with this, please contact the senior tutor as soon as possible to discuss it. Extensions to submission dates can be agreed in cases of illness or other difficulty, but not routinely. The lecturer who sets an exercise can approve a small delay, for a good reason, but does not have to do so.

    Some other items worth noting:

  • In order to progress to the 3rd Year of the MEng programme, students must normally achieve an overall (second year) aggregate mark of at least 60%. Students who fail to achieve this will normally be required to transfer to the 3rd Year of the BEng programme

  • the OS lab in the spring term requires strong C implementation skills! So pay close attention to the C++ course offered in the Autumn term!

  • The summer term (after the exam period) will be as busy as the rest of the year, with a (brand new) course on Human-Centred Design , a group project and a lab ( Systems Engineering Team Games).

    • Throughout the year, for any problems/issues you can contact

    Finally, note that the RAE Advanced Award Scheme (open to second year MEng undergraduates) is open for applications until December 2011.

    I wish you a happy and productive year of studies. With five courses in each of autumn and spring term, the labs, etc you will have a busy schedule ... the key to success is to keep up with lecture material so as not to leave too much to do at revision time.

    Francesca Toni (second year coordinator)

    Second year options and compulsory courses

    BEng and MEng regulations:

    You need to register your chosen options by 15 February 2012 (see here)

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    Labs

    The labs are coordinated by Mark Wheelhouse . For a detailed schedule of the labs (with material and deadlines) please see cate.

    Different lab assignments will contribute to the overall lab (200 marks) as follows

  • Enigma: 10 marks
  • MAlice: 55 marks
  • LinkLoad: 10 marks
  • Prolog: 35 marks
  • Life (spring term): 10 marks
  • OS (spring term): 75 marks
  • Team Games (summer term): 5 marks
    • Please note the following:
  • The OS lab lasts for the entire duration of the Spring term. As part of the lab, you will be designing and implementing the core parts of a simple operating system for the x86 platform. The lab consists of three difficult tasks, which are spread throughout the term (preceded by a short introductory task).
  • The tasks require strong C implementation skills! Pay close attention to the C++ course offered in the Autumn term (week 1)!
  • In the second half of the Autumn term, we will distribute the documentation for the OS lab, which consists of over 100 pages describing the operating system framework that you will be working with. We ask you to familiarize yourselves with the code and the documentation before the start of the Spring term.
    • Note also that:
  • the first two parts of the OS course will solely count towards the coursework (for the OS course) whereas the latter two will count towards the lab mark

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    Exams

    The exam period will be at the beginning of the summer term as follows:
  • (date to be confirmed) Exams begin
  • (date to be confirmed) Exams end
    • The timetable will be published here.

    EXAM FORMAT:

  • The core examinations (for compulsory taught courses other than statistics) will be of 150 minutes duration (with 5 minutes reading time at the beginning).
    You will need to answer all (four) questions in the exam papers for these examinations.

  • The statistics examination will be of 120 minutes duration (with no reading time).
    You will need to answer all (four) questions in the exam paper.

  • The other examinations (for optional taught courses) will be of 75 minutes (with 5 minutes reading time at the beginning).
    You will need to answer all (two) questions in the exam papers for these examinations.
    •

    A list of core and other examinations can be found in the BEng Regulations and MEng Regulations

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    Second Year Representatives

    Your Second Year Student Representatives are:

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    Plagiarism

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    Useful Links

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    This page is maintained by Francesca Toni (f.toni@imperial.ac.uk) and based on a page created by Steffen van Bakel. Please send any corrections to Francesca Toni.
    Last modified: 1 October 2011.