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What is a practical computer science exam?

29% written exams
13% practical exams
58% coursework

They didn't go over this in introduction. Had to find it on the sheet they gave, but no explanation and i keep forgetting to ask lecturers what they are :/
And we only have practicals in yr 1, why is that ? 0.o
cardiff uni btw if that helps

i'm just confused with what u do in a practical CS exam? Is it like a bunch of questions, then it asks u to come up with code solutions?

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 1

winterscoming

You'd be best sending an email to the lecturers to find out exactly what it involves really, otherwise your guess would be as good as anyone else's. I can think of a few ideas of what it could involve, but every university will probably have their own ideas.

I had a few modules with practical exams at Staffs, they were usually assessments which take place in the computer labs under exam conditions. In some cases it involved starting out with some incomplete or broken code, so the assessment might involve fixing errors, diagnosing and fixing bugs, changing it to make it behave differently, adding some missing code, etc.

The exam also might involve handing in the code at the end, or it might be asking questions which can only be answered by writing/editing the code - e.g. you might be given a set of data/inputs where you need to write an algorithm to find/calculate the answer.