Exam Questions

Sorry to all those who are emailing me questions about the exam --- I do not have the resources to allocate to answering questions about the course material by email! It is very time consuming, difficult to explain some things by email and impossible for me to be sure I have understood your question correctly and that you have understood my answer correctly. In addition, I just don't have the time to answer questions from the class in this way --- this is why the pre-examination consultation session was organised!

Best of luck with your study.

assignment 2 - feedback and results online

Well done to all of you for your assignment 2 submissions... they are really great! The marks I have allocated and the feedback from your peers is now available online:

• Feedback
  
• Marks

I look forward to seeing you at the pre-examination consultation session (see previous post).

Pre-exam consultation

Pre-exam consultation for fit3084 will take place at the Clayton campus as follows:

Time: 2pm
Date: Friday, 25th June 2010
Place: building 26, room 135

Please come prepared with questions of your own: it is a chance for you to ask questions about the unit content and practice exam. If nobody asks any questions, there will be nothing to do!

Study hard :-)

Assignment 2 - extension

A couple of groups have approached me asking for an extension to the assignment deadline into next week. Unfortunately this is not possible since the peer-assessment must be completed before the end of semester (next week). However...

If you wish to work on your assignment over this coming weekend I will allow you to do so. Usually, on Friday afternoon at the time of the deadline, I would go over the assignments that are online to make sure they are all working and let groups know if I spot any errors. As I am allowing you to work on the assignments over the weekend, I will not be able to do this. Hence, if the peer assessment system opens on Monday morning and your assignment is not working or it is not online when a student assesses it, it will be ranked "worst" and there will be no way to change this. I.e. all assignments must be working by the time the peer assessment system opens!

I hope this arrangement is acceptable to you. It applies to all groups equally as I do not want some groups to have more time (or less) than others.

Powerpoint is on the axis of evil

An interesting article on the evils of Powerpoint (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?hp).

Read it keeping in mind our lecture on Information Design and compare what is usually presented on powerpoint slides with some of the examples from that lecture.

Assignment 1 - marks available

You may now login to receive your assignment 1 marks. Please note that these results do not make allowances for the following:

• late peer assessment (without special consideration etc.)
  Penalty = 10% of your assignment mark from the late submission time onwards and a further 10% for each extra 24 hours capped at 50% of your assignment mark. I.e. as long as you eventually complete this task the lowest result you can achieve for assignment 1 is 50% of your original result.
  
  
• reduced assignment group size
  Bonus = 10% of your assignment mark per group member down.

These adjustments will be incorporated into end-of-semester result calculations.

Peer assessment task 1 - feedback available

Now that the peer assessment task 1 is closed:

• I have (re)opened the feedback system for you to receive comments on your work. People's views will differ, that is the point of doing this exercise! Consider the opinions and suggestions you have been offered and start work on responding to the feedback.

• You do not need to redo the design document. Simply write a single new document of your responses and post it at the middle link of your group's splash page.

...then start work on assignment 2 taking into account people's view of your proposal! :-)

Now that the peer assessment system is closed, marks for these first assignments will be posted ASAP.

FINAL reminder - peer assessment closes tonight

The peer assessment system closes at 23:00:00 tonight.
This is a compulsory hurdle requirement for all students enrolled in the unit.
Numerous students are yet to complete the task: please do so today!

Font sizes (including "em")

The examples given for font size in the lecture on CSS used a measurement of a pt - a point. As discussed in the lecture on Typography, these are absolute units. Others include:

• in: inches — 1 inch = 2.54 cm.
• cm: centimeters
• mm: millimeters
• pt: points — the points used by CSS 2.1 are equal to 1/72nd of an inch.
• pc: picas — 1 pica is equal to 12 points.

We can use measurements such as these in our style sheets like (for example), this:

h1 { margin: 0.5in }      /* inches  */
h2 { line-height: 3cm }   /* centimeters */
h3 { word-spacing: 4mm }  /* millimeters */
h4 { font-size: 12pt }    /* points */
h4 { font-size: 1pc }     /* picas */

We can also specify relative units in style sheets. Relative units specify a length relative to another length property. Style sheets that use relative units will more easily scale from one medium to another (e.g., from a computer display to a laser printer).

Relative units include:

• em: the 'font-size' of the relevant font
• ex: the 'x-height' of the relevant font (the height of an 'x' character in the font)
  
• px: pixels, relative to the viewing device

We might use these as follows:

/* em
* this margin will be half the size of the h1 font
*/
h1 { margin: 0.5em }

/* ex
* this margin will be the size of the h1 font x height
*/
h1 { margin: 1ex }

/* px
* the paragraph font will be 12 pixels high
*/
p  { font-size: 12px }

These notes are sourced from http://www.w3.org/

Peer Assessment Task 1 - details

Just to clarify the situation regarding peer assessment submission.

As it indicates clearly on the login page, you can only submit this task once. However, if you really want to, you can login to the system multiple times as long as you don't click submit. The system will not save your entries so it is best to keep them recorded in a text file if you are intending to login multiple times. Then, before you click submit, just paste your feedback from the file into the form.

Why is the page like this? Because it has been designed as an assessment/hurdle task. You login once, finish the task and submit. I do not encourage you to complete the task in multiple sessions even though this is possible.