ECE260: Advice on Exams
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Exam Preparation
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The tips below are offered to help you prepare effectively for
exams in the course.

It is very important to remember that assignments in the course
are graded solely for completeness (i.e., effort).  No marks are
awarded for correctness.  Consequently, for each assignment, it
is extremely important to compare your solutions to those in the
posted solution set.  When doing so, you should be checking that:
1) you arrived at the correct final answer; and 2) if you used a
different approach from the one used in the solution set, confirm
that it is both correct and relatively efficient.  Often, there can
be multiple approaches to solving a problem, and very importantly,
they can often differ very substantially in the amount of work
involved.  On timed exams, solving problems in a time-efficient
manner is clearly desirable.

While starting exam preparations by reviewing and possibly retrying
some assignment questions is not unreasonable, it is also important
to try questions that you have not previously completed and for
which you have not already seen the answers.  When revisiting
a previously encountered problem, your brain will often retain
part of the solution, leading you to simply recall what you have
seen before without truly testing your understanding.  The most
critical step in solving any exam question is identifying the general
solution approach.  Without this step, there is no way to make any
meaningful progress towards solving the problem, and this is usually
when zero marks are awarded.  When you attempt questions you have
previously seen, you already know the general solution approach,
so this critical part of the thinking process is not tested.

Writing Exams
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Based on considerable experience marking exams and reviewing TA
grading for this and similar courses, the following guidance is
offered to help you avoid some common pitfalls that often lead
to unnecessary mark loss.

When answering an exam question:

1. You must show all of your work and must not skip steps in
your solution (unless explicitly indicated otherwise in the wording
of the exam question).   There are a number of important reasons
for this, but the most important ones are:

    (a) Distinguishing between guessed and well-reasoned answers:
    Since many (but not all) exam questions tend to be of a similar
    type as ones on the assignments, guessing the general form
    of a final answer is often possible to do.  In such cases,
    if steps are skipped, the marker cannot distinguish between an
    answer that is well reasoned by a student who understands the
    subject matter being tested and a student who is simply guessing
    based on a memorized pattern.  It is the responsibility of a
    student writing an exam to demonstrate that they are not simply
    guessing, and this is only possible to do when all steps in
    the solution are shown.  When it is unclear whether an answer
    is well reasoned or guessed, markers have no basis to assume
    the former, and marks will very likely not be awarded.

    (b) Part marks: By showing all of your work, it becomes possible
    to give marks for partly correct work instead of being forced
    to mark with a binary marking scheme (i.e., full marks for a
    completely error-free answer and zero otherwise).  Since it is
    impossible for you to know the exact marking scheme for an exam
    question when writing the exam, you cannot know if a step may
    have marks allocated to it, in which case skipping that step
    could result in a mark penalty.  So, not skipping steps avoids
    this potential problem.  In addition, skipping steps also tends
    to increase the likelihood of making mistakes, which also cost
    marks.

Although students sometimes feel pressure to skip steps and not
show all work in an effort to conserve time when writing an exam,
in practice skipping steps tends to cost more marks than running
out of time would.

2. You must present your answer in a way that the marker can clearly
understand.  Even if your understanding of the subject matter is
excellent, a marker can only assess what is clearly communicated.
A marker cannot give marks for parts of an answer that they cannot
understand; if something cannot be understood, there is no basis
for saying it is correct.  Sometimes adding some brief comments can
be helpful to make an answer easier for the marker to understand.
In most cases (e.g., unless explicitly indicated otherwise in the
exam question), point form should be adequate for such commentary
as long as the meaning is sufficiently clear.

3. You must be careful to follow the instructions in the exam
question.  For example:
    - you may be asked to add commentary to explain steps;
    - you may be required to use (or not use) a specific method;
    - you may be required to present your answer in a particular way;
    - you may be asked to answer in complete sentences.
Failure to follow instructions like those above can often result
in a significant mark penalty or even zero marks being awarded
in some cases.

4. Any symbols or variables introduced should be clearly defined
unless their meaning would be obvious to the marker from the context.