Lab Activities
Labs this semester are held-twice weekly, during section. You will not be graded on your performance during lab, though you are expected to complete them. You may miss up to three labs over the course of the semester with no penalty. If you miss any more than three labs, we will reduce your course grade by half a letter grade (e.g. B goes to B-) for every three labs missing.
Labs are divided into an classroom component and a independent component. Classroom activities must be completed in your discussion section. Contact your lab instructor if you have a legitimate conflict with one of your labs.
On the other hand, independent activities can be completed outside of class, as long as it is completed before the due date. In that sense, it is a form of mini-homework, though we strive to make it possible to finish both the classroom and independent activities during class time.
When we the number of missing labs, we count the number of missing classroom labs and the number of independent labs, and then we take the higher of the two numbers. So you do still get credit if you complete the independent activities when you miss discussion section.
Table of Contents
Bi-Weekly Labs
All labs are completed through the online lab system. When a lab becomes available, a link will appear in the table below. Exact due dates for the independent component vary by lab section.
| Lab | Topic | Code | Posted | Due |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Getting Started | lab1.zip | 08/26/25 | 08/29/25 |
| Week 1 | Expressions & Variables | no code | 08/28/25 | 09/03/25 |
| Week 2 | Modules | no code | 09/02/25 | 09/05/25 |
| Week 2 | Functions | no code | 09/04/25 | 09/10/25 |
| Week 3 | Strings | lab5.zip | 09/09/25 | 09/12/25 |
| Week 3 | Testing | lab6.zip | 09/11/25 | 09/17/25 |
| Week 4 | Conditionals | lab7.zip | 09/16/25 | 09/19/25 |
| Week 4 | Assignment 1 | no code | 09/18/25 | 09/19/25 |
| Week 5 | Objects | 09/23/25 | 09/26/25 | |
| Week 5 | Debugging | 09/25/25 | 10/01/25 | |
| Week 6 | Asserts | 09/30/25 | 10/03/25 | |
| Week 6 | Sequences | 10/02/25 | 10/08/25 | |
| Week 7 | Assignment 3 | 10/07/25 | 10/08/25 | |
| Week 7 | For-Loops | 10/09/25 | 10/17/25 | |
| Week 8 | Recursion I | 10/16/25 | 10/22/25 | |
| Week 9 | Recursion II | 10/21/25 | 10/24/25 | |
| Week 9 | Nested Lists & Dictionaries | 10/23/25 | 10/29/25 | |
| Week 10 | Blackjack | 10/28/25 | 10/31/25 | |
| Week 10 | Object-Oriented Design | 10/30/25 | 11/05/25 | |
| Week 11 | Subclasses | 11/04/25 | 11/07/25 | |
| Week 11 | Abstraction | 11/06/25 | 11/12/25 | |
| Week 12 | While Loops | 11/11/25 | 11/14/25 | |
| Week 12 | GUI Classes | 11/13/25 | 11/19/25 | |
| Week 13 | Advanced Error Handling | 11/18/25 | 11/21/25 | |
| Week 13 | Assignment 7 | 11/20/25 | 12/03/25 | |
| Week 15 | Generators | 12/02/25 | 12/08/25 |
Lab Policies
Because of the course size this semester, all labs will be done through the online lab system. We have used this an interface from even before we went online, and the students really like it. It has the advantage that you continue to work on the lab in your room on your own time and still receive quality feedback.
The drawback of an online lab system is that it requires exact answers, which is hard if you are still struggling to learn the material. That is why we allow you to have a human check off a lab even if the answers are incorrect. If a staff member looks over your lab and sees that you have put in enough work, they can manually override the lab system. There is no shame in doing this, and you can always go back and retry the exercises later with no penalty. The goal for the labs is practice, not perfection. This is true for both classroom and independent activities.
Classroom activities must be completed during your discussion section. If you have a legitimate excuse, we may be able to provide you a make-up, but this policy should not be abused. Given that you can miss three labs with no penalty, we typically prefer you use these three days as “skip days” unless you have extenuating circumstances. If you have an excused absence (such as for a sporting event or a ob interview), you need to let your lab instructor know ahead of time so that we can schedule a make-up.
The deadline for an independent activity is typically the end of your next discussion section. We realize that this deadline is much tighter for Tuesday/Wednesday labs (where you have two days) than it is for Thursday/Friday labs (where you have 5 days). Our plan is to distribute the work so that this is feasible. If this proves to be a problem, we will reassess the deadline policy later in the semester. Again, we try to keep these deadlines strict in the absence of extenuating circumstances.